Ever received one of those dodgy “tech support” calls from “Microsoft”?<\/p>\n
While those tech-savvy amongst you may immediately recognise the scam, these fraudsters trick an unbelievable number of people every year, reports geek.com<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n That’s why French blogger<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>Ivan Kwiatkowski turned the tables and tricked one of these scammers into installing malware onto his own machine.<\/p>\n Kwiatkowski played along, allowing a scammer named Dileep to connect to his virtual machine – which he\u2019d intentionally left vulnerable – \u00a0and played dumb while various DOS commands were run to make him think his machine was riddled with malware.<\/p>\n He was told that everything could be remedied by purchasing a \u201ctech protection package\u201d for the bargain price of \u20ac299.99.<\/p>\n That’s when Kwiatkowski\u00a0 noticed that the remote control software being used by Dileep allowed him to send and receive files<\/strong>.<\/p>\n As a security specialist, Kwiatkowski already had several Locky Ransomware<\/a><\/strong> variants in his inbox, so he grabbed one, renamed it as a .jpeg file and sent it through.<\/p>\n When Dileep tried to open the image nothing appeared on his screen, but the ransomware secretly began encrypting his files.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n How do you deal with scam artists? Let us know in the comments below and in our forums.<\/strong><\/p>\n The 10 best extensions for Google Chrome<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n
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