Locky ransomware is doing the rounds in the cyberspace through spam mails, says ICERT

The central government on Saturday said that ransomware, Locky, is spreading through “massive spam campaign”.

According to the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (ICERT), “spam mails” are being used to spread the ransomware.

“It has been reported that a new wave of spam mails are circulating… to spread variants of Locky ransomware. Reports indicate that over 23 million messages have been sent in this campaign,” ICERT said.

“The message contains common subjects like please print, documents, photo, images, scans and pictures.” The ransomware is known to scramble contents of a computer or server and demands payment to unlock it “usually by anonymous decentralised virtual currency Bitcoins”.

Ransomware in IT world can be referred to as virtual kidnapping of data in exchange for a reward. It’s a malware which restricts users from accessing their own data on a corrupted system and would demand a ransom to revoke the access. The recent slew of coordinated ransomware attacks known as WannaCry or WannaCrypt on various sectors in European countries have proved to be an effective wake-up call for businesses around the world.

WannaCry is Encrypting Ransomware or Crypto Locker type of ransomware that is programmed to attack Microsoft Windows software. The attack last week, infected more than 230,000 computers in 150 countries including India, demanding ransom payments in Bitcoin in 28 languages.

With inputs from IANS.