A new ransomware attack takes a different tactic when executed, asking the victim to play, rather than pay.
When ransomware hits, it encrypts your files, leaving you locked out. “It jumbles them up so you can’t read them,” as Don Meyer, Check Point Software’s head of product marketing for data center, told Q13 News. Ransomware often finds its way to victims through phishing emails or clicking on links on compromised websites, Meyer explained.
If you’re lucky, the payload of the ransomware attack is the work of a less sophisticated hacker and can easily be addressed. With the recently discovered PUBG ransomware, that seems to be the case.
PUBG stands for PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, a video game that came on the market about a year ago, and which New York Magazine called “wildly successful.” PUBG also is the extension that is attached to all files when they become encrypted.While money is usually the goal of ransomware, this particular one asks the victim to play PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds for one hour.
According to Bleeping Computer, the ransomware automatically restores the files once the game is played and the process is detected. And it doesn’t actually require an hour of playtime.