Ever received one of those dodgy “tech support” calls from “Microsoft”?
While those tech-savvy amongst you may immediately recognise the scam, these fraudsters trick an unbelievable number of people every year, reports geek.com.
That’s why French blogger Ivan Kwiatkowski turned the tables and tricked one of these scammers into installing malware onto his own machine.
Kwiatkowski played along, allowing a scammer named Dileep to connect to his virtual machine – which he’d intentionally left vulnerable – and played dumb while various DOS commands were run to make him think his machine was riddled with malware.
He was told that everything could be remedied by purchasing a “tech protection package” for the bargain price of €299.99.
That’s when Kwiatkowski noticed that the remote control software being used by Dileep allowed him to send and receive files.
As a security specialist, Kwiatkowski already had several Locky Ransomware variants in his inbox, so he grabbed one, renamed it as a .jpeg file and sent it through.
When Dileep tried to open the image nothing appeared on his screen, but the ransomware secretly began encrypting his files.
In a day or two he will be hard-locked out of his PC and will be forced to pay Kwiatkowski’s ransom in order to get access again.
How do you deal with scam artists? Let us know in the comments below and in our forums.
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That’s epic!! I have never been contacted by one of these characters – it would be so much fun playing stupid and wasting their time, then reveal that you are using a “silver” computer with the glowing apple thing on the lid. Or a bit more obvious, Linux, “but how can there be a problem with my Windows if in fact I am running Linux?”. One day.