Watch out! WeChat Pay Infected by a Blackmail Virus?

Now that we’ve entered the era of mobile payment, life has become much more convenient. But a common fear is that one day, our money will be stolen out of our accounts.

The emergence of "extortion viruses" has led people to pay far more attention to what goes on in their phones and computers.

Do you remember the bitcoin extortion virus “WannaCry"?

A year and a half ago, this virus swept the world and truly redefined what an “extortion virus” meant.

Basically, it extorts money by encrypting important files on your computer, requiring victims to pay in bitcoins to unlock them.

A year and a half later, as "WannaCry" gradually faded away in our memories, another blackmail virus came about. However, in the opinion of Internet security experts, the "technical level" of this blackmail virus is much worse than “WannaCry”. Uh oh…

The first extortion virus in China was paid via WeChat

Recently, there has been a ransom demand from a WeChat blackmail virus in China. Once the invasion of the user's computer encrypts files, victims are required to scan the pop-up WeChat two-dimensional code to pay the ransom and get the key to decrypt their phones.

But this time, after the infection occurs, the WeChat blackmail virus will encrypt TXT, office documents, and other valuable data, and release a "your computer files have been encrypted, click this decryption" shortcut on your desktop computer. Then, a pop-up decryption tutorial and two-dimensional code appear to accept payment, ultimately forcing the victim to pay the ransom. 

But the extortion virus did not modify the file suffix name.

Blackmail page 

The encrypted file from the extortion virus will pop up onto the prompt and require the user to pay RMB 110 in ransom before the specified date to decrypt. If you fail to meet the deadline, the server will automatically delete the key.

According to the Hurong security monitoring team, as of December 3, more than 20,000 users have been infected by the virus, which has also stolen users' various account passwords, including Taobao, T-mall, Alipay, 163 email, Baidu cloud, and QQ accounts.

According to the latest news on the matter, WeChat has banned the account of the developer of the extortion virus involved the first time, and his "receive money code" function has been frozen accordingly.

WeChat user property and account security are not subject to any threat.

In parallel, the Alipay security center also said yesterday that none of Alipay's accounts have been affected and that even password leaks can maximize the account security. Alipay's security team said it had not received any feedback from users whose Alipay accounts were affected.

Analysts in the industry said the "hacker" did not actually make the extortion software for profit but instead intended to show off his skills. Developing a virus software to cause a sensation on social media for the sole purpose of getting the attention he wanted…

Anyway, keeping an eye on your wallet is always a good thing. Be careful if you run into this kind of technical issue, and be sure to report it right away.

Those who sacrifice the interests of the masses will eventually be punished by the law.

Source: CCTV, Xinhuanet

Editor: Crystal Huang 

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