“There is a lot of money at stake here, so criminals are always going to be interested,” said<br />Mr. Hypponen, whose company is still tracking the fallout from last month’s WannaCry virus.<br />Asaf Cidon, a vice president at the security company Barracuda Networks who studies ransomware, said<br />that criminals had become more sophisticated in the last year, especially in how they choose their victims.<br />The attack late last year was, according to the cybersecurity researchers who discovered what they now call<br />the Popcorn Time ransomware, the first Ponzi scheme for one of the internet’s oldest types of cyberattacks.<br />Ponzi Scheme Meets Ransomware for a Doubly Malicious Attack -<br />By SHEERA FRENKELJUNE 6, 2017<br />SAN FRANCISCO — The first message to pop up on the computer screen let the victims know they had been hacked.<br />The victim had a choice: Pay the hackers a ransom of one bitcoin, a digital currency worth roughly $2,365, in<br />exchange for regaining access to the computer, or try to infect two new people on behalf of the attackers.
