Beware Of Ransomware
Imagine suddenly being locked out of your own cell phone, and then told you have to pay some crook to get back in. It happened to an Orem woman, police say she told them she was browsing websites on her phone and an FBI message popped up saying child pornography had been found and now her phone was locked, and to unlock it she’d have to pay $300.
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Trent Leavitt from Decipher Forensics said the FBI or the IRS is not going to lock your phone down. “These are popular scams people do to scare the average consumer,” he said. Leavitt has seen this kind of what’s called Ransomware before. Ransomware is a type of malware which restricts access to the computer system that it infects, and demands a ransom paid to the creator of the malware in order for the restriction to be removed. Leavitt digs into Smartphones and computers to recover data for consumers as well as for investigations by police and the FBI. “There are some people that simply can’t live without those documents that they need,” he said. That’s why Ransomware is a big business. Last year, we reported on CryptoLocker, the Ransomware that hit computers. It raked in $30 million in just over three months.
“We don’t realize how much importance phones play in our lives for those of us that use them every day, until we don’t have access to them,” said Leavitt. There are several types of mobile Ransomware, some of them will simply lock you out of your phone then demand up to $600 to remove it, which you cannot do yourself. Others will encrypt all your phone’s photos, music and documents with code that’s nearly impossible to break unless you pay up. “People who make those viruses or malware are constantly trying to evolve them to make them more difficult to get into,” Leavitt said. He said even if you get access back there might still be more trouble later on. “They’re not going to walk away,” he said. “They’re already in your phone, why just walk away from it? If you can just monitor what you’re doing, what websites you go to, if you do social engineering and track what you do and where you go,” Leavitt said.
Reboot your phone into it’s safe mode and that will stop your ‘phone is locked’ message from popping up. Then scroll through the phone’s app manager. If you find a suspicious app, uninstall it and then reboot the phone.
If a stranger sends you a website to click or suggests you download an app from outside official stores like Google Play or iTunes, don’t fall for it. It could download Ransomware. Remember that your cell phone is just a mini-computer and it can be infected with viruses and malware the same way an ordinary computer can.
