Ransomware Demands Naked Pictures Instead of Money

We all know how cyber criminals extort money out of victims by locking their computer with malware. The computer will be unlocked only after they  pay a certain amount of money in bitcoin. There is a deadline, before which the money must be transferred. Now here comes a perverted twist to the whole ransom drama: some criminals don’t want money or bitcoin, but demand naked pictures of the user.

MalwareHunterTeam, a research group has come across a software called nRansomware. The group has posted a screenshot that shows when the attack has happened. It reads “Your computer has been locked,” followed by a request for the victim to email the hackers. “After we reply, you must send at least 10 nude pictures of you. After that, we will have to verify that the nudes belong to you.”

The message comes with several fictional characters of kids and a smiley face with the ‘F’ word in bold. It is not clear how many people have fallen victim to this ransomware, and how dangerous these hackers are and if they really mean to harm the victim using their nude pictures.

The malware does appear to be real, and many users have reported this file nRansom.exe as malicious. Almost every major antivirus engines have reported the malware has legitimate. Social media was quite a buzz with the report of the perverted malware.

Malware ends up in the repositories when someone submits it with the details and the intention and behavior of the malware. A few cyber experts did try to infect a system to study how it works, but they were not able to do so. MalwareHunterTeam along with other researchers think this looks like to be some kind of prank since it is not encrypting the files.

According to MalwareHunterTeam “It is a screen locker, so files aren’t encrypted. We have no information about anyone getting infected with this”.

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