The emails claim that all of the victim’s devices have been hacked and infected with the infamous ransomware — and then ask for Bitcoin to “fix” it.

The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) identified ransomware as one of 2016’s top threats, but a relatively small number of attacks were reported.

Spiral Toys has filed a breach notification with the California Attorney General’s office informing them of the CloudPets data breach.

Voice messages from children sent through an internet-connected toy called CloudPets were stolen from an exposed MongoDB database, which has been wiped clean and the data held for ransom.

Crooks breaking into enterprise networks are holding data they steal for ransom under the guise they are doing the company a favor by exposing a flaw. The criminal act is described as bug poaching by IBM researchers and is becoming a growing new threat to businesses vulnerable to attacks. According to IBM’s X-Force researchers, the...

With some members of the so-called Armada Collective in jail, another actor has decided to co-opt their technique of sending threatening DDoS extortion messages to businesses worldwide. Only difference is, this group isn’t following through with its threat, and it’s still collecting serious money. A blog post from CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince says that the...

Experts believe that the success tied to a recent spate of DDoS-for-hire groups may be because many are copycat collectives operating with a shorter lifespan. Researchers with Recorded Future, a Massachusetts-based firm that tracks real time threat intelligence, said Monday that they’ve noticed an increase in would-be hackers asking for guidance on forums when it comes to...