If corporate America, government entities, and hospitals weren't enough, now ransomware developers are attacking Golf!
According to a report from GolfWeek, computers at the PGA have been infected with ransomware. The victims learned they were infected on Tuesday when ransom notes started appearing on their screen.
"Your network has been penetrated," the ransom note read according to
Golfweek's article. "All files on each host in the network have been encrypted with a strong algorythm [sic]."
Based on these strings and the misspelling of "algorithm", the PGA was most likely infected with the BitPaymer ransomware. This is the same type of ransomware that recently
hit the Alaskan town of Matanuska-Susitna and forced them to use typewriters for a week.
BitPaymer becoming more active?
As already stated, based on the reported ransom note, the PGA was most likely targeted by the
BitPaymer Ransomware. BitPaymer has been around for a while, but typically keeps a low profile. There has been some moderate activity, though, with Bitpaymer over the last few weeks though as shown by the
ID Ransomware chart below.