Greater Manchester Police (GMP) will not be pursuing the criminals who used a Trojan horse program to lock a Manchester woman’s files and demanded a ransom to release them.
The malicious Archiveus program was unintentionally downloaded by Helen Barrow of Rochdale, who found it locked her files into a 30-character password-protected folder. A ransom note instructed her to avoid going to the police and told her to buy pharmaceutical products online to gain the password to release her files.
I cannot really blame the GMP for their response. Most police forces of this nature simply do not have the resources to go after virus/malware writers. This type of activity really falls to an organization that has the resources to accomplish these goals. Something like the FBI, RCMP or Scotland Yard would be better equipped to handle situations such as hunting down an internet based felon. It’s frustrating but, there is only so much police can do with their present funding.
[tags]GMP, Virus, Malware, Spyware, Ransomware, Hackers[/tags]