Cybercrime and the Economics of Micro-markets
In the old days bank robbers would target banks because "that’s where the money is." Sure, targeting high volume systems is one way to go, for instance, UCLA disclosed last week that personal information on 800,000 students, faculty, alumni and others affiliated with the university were compromised. With wide spread botnets and keyloggers controlling devices and collecting information it is now easier to target individuals - its micro-marketing meets cybercrime. The Washington Post Security Fix and Websense are reporting on type of ransomware that targets emails.
In this attack, a victims email messages and contacts are deleted and a message from the attacker is left demanding payment in return for the messages and contacts. This kind of attack in itself may not be too much of a concern to some but if the economics of ransomware are similar to those of spam, then a relatively small investment combined with an infinitesimal response rate may be enough to spur on this kind of attack.
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