Online computer extortion and blackmail is nothing new. You may have heard about big companies being extorted for hundreds of thousands of dollars, or even more, in order to keep their companies from being blackmailed over something, and being brought down by a DDOS, or having some scandal (either real or fabricated) made public. Some such activity comes in the form of ransomware (where your files get locked or wiped and then you have to pay to be able to access them and get them back), and some comes in the form of plain old blackmail, such as the example below.

Archiveus is the newest of a string of Trojans being dubbed “ransomware” because they lock and hold your files hostage until you either purchase something from the ransomware’s author or pay the ransomware’s author money outright. Here is the password to unlock your files which have been locked by the ransomware Archiveus.

A nasty new Windows ransom trojan called Ransom-A (also Troj/Ransom-A and TROJ_RANSOM.A) freezes your computer, and if you don’t pay it ransom money, it starts deleting your files.

We all know about spam, spyware, viruses and phishing. But these pale by comparison with (and indeed are the supporting cast for) the mother of all Internet incursions: extortion of online businesses.