Eric Zhou
“ The cyber kidnappers: The day hackers hijacked my phone”
Summary: Nick Harvey’s smart phone was “hijacked” by hacker, besides, he also asked
to pay certain amount of ransom send some money via a voucher code to get the phone
unlocked. Meanwhile, Ken Main also bothered by same problem. Those two individuals
encountered ransomware – a type of computer virus which unlocks the users out of their
computers or phones and collects your money for the return of the files. Raj Samani who is
the Intel Security’s chief technology officer stated that those ransomware virus are making
hundreds of millions of dollars loss for companies. Technical experts have found some
ways of unlocking some forms of ransomware but cyber criminals are developing more
sophisticated viruses too. This is a long term fight between cyber criminals and technical
departments.
Analysis: Currently, individuals are more likely to attack by cyber criminals based on
electronic devices and personal accounts. Different banks, websites, organizations all
require an online personal account while this trend create opportunities to cyber criminals
to stole people’s information even fraud other people. The article showed two obvious
examples for this issue. Moreover, different organizations even individuals are struggling
on pretending cyber virus. For a PC, we could download a security software to remove
virus while the information system of a large company might need more time and efforts to