From PC World: The number of users infected with mobile ransomware is skyrocketing, as hackers try to expand the number of potential victims they can target.
Compared with a year ago, almost four times as many users are being attacked by mobile ransomware, security firm Kaspersky Lab said on Wednesday.
It’s a troubling trend. Ransomware has typically targeted PCs by encrypting all the information that is inside the targeted machines, and then holding the data hostage in exchange for money.
The threat is that users who fail to pay ransom will see all the data erased. Hospitals, schools and police departments have all been major victims. But increasingly, hackers have begun focusing on smartphones.
Kaspersky looked at its own Android customers and noticed the spike. Between April 2015 and March this year,136,532 of its users encountered a mobile version of ransomware. That’s up from 35,413 in the year earlier period.
View: Article @ Source Site
