Think crime doesn’t pay? Tell that to the crooks behind the Cryptolocker malware. In just over 100 days, they’ve already managed to rake in somewhere around $30 million dollars. That’s according to numbers from Dell Secureworks, and their researchers think they’re being pretty conservative. The estimate is based on the assumption that just 0.4% of Cryptolocker victims have paid up
Let’s not forget that Cryptolocker began accepting payments in Bitcoin not long ago. Keith Jarvis, who put together Dell’s report, notes that if the criminals timed their Bitcoin conversion cleverly, they may have hauled in even more money. Another interesting revelation from Dell’s report shows just how businesslike the Cryptolocker crew really is. Support for Bitcoin was added so that victims who were scared to pay with a personal or business credit card had a more secure payment option.
Initially, the ransom was set at two Bitcoins, but when the value of a Bitcoin skyrocketed, they cut that figure in half — a surprisingly gentlemanly move.
Dell also mapped out where Cryptolocker is infecting systems. Unsurprisingly, American systems are the number one target and make up over 70% of the total. More than 22,000 infected computers were detected at the end of October.
Things have slowed greatly, however: just 1,540 systems popped up during the last week. Perhaps the Cryptolocker criminals are taking their foot off the gas while making additional changes to the already sophisticated malware.
With tens of millions of dollars banked already, maybe they’re ready to pull the plug altogether. Perhaps Cryptlocker was the last big score by some longtime players in the malware game and they’re ready to ride off into the sunset before the long arm of the law catches up with them.
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