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The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Fri Aug 21 1998 - 17:18:49 ADT
Simon R Knight (srk@tcp.co.uk)
Sat, 20 Jun 1998 22:38:17 0000
On 19 Jun 98 at 12:21, Black Unicorn wrote:
> At 08:22 PM 6/17/98 , Simon R Knight wrote:
> >On 17 Jun 98 at 14:26, bram wrote:
> >I recently read that a number of UK and European banks had been
> >attacked by a sophisticated kind of virus/program. This virus
> >apparently worked by encrypting the banks more important files, and a
> >fee of 10 million was reportedly required, before the perpetrators
> >would provide the decryption key. As the cost of downtime to such
> >banks can quickly exceed a figure of 10 million, they pay up. The
> >UK police said that banks weren't reporting such incidents, and
> >making there job very difficult.
>
> Are you trolling? This was exposed as a hoax almost immediately after the
> rumor emerged.
I have never heard anything regarding a hoax. This crime was
reported quite widely in the British press, following a statement
made by the police. The police - as I recall - were anouncing their
intention to set up a special (committee?) to investigate such
crimes. The idea being that Banks might report more instances of this
kind were they able to do so in confidence. From why I recall reading
(and hearing on the news) there was no suggestion that the cases the
police refered to were anything other than genuine.
I don't know how a formal press statement by the British police
regarding their concern over an increasing number of hight-tech bank
crimes, can actually have come to assume the status of a hoax. This
wasn't an attempt at a troll ... there are probably a number of
references the announcement made by the British police online.
> It's also getting off topic for CodherPlunks.
>
I considered if this may be the case, but as the crime specifically
centred upon the use of unauthorized encryption as a weapon,
it seemed to represent an interesting - if unusual - application of
cryptographic technology, which I thought might prove of interest.
Simon R Knight
The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Fri Aug 21 1998 - 17:18:49 ADT