Websense to Address New E-Mail Ransom Attack

In an ongoing effort to make home users aware of emerging threats I am posting this notice that was borrowed from an email from Websense. PROTECT YOUSELF!!! See www.websense.com and search on ThreatSeeker.

THREAT ALERT New Cyber-Extortion Scheme Targets Webmail Websense® Security Labs™ has identified a new form of cyber-extortion with its ThreatSeeker™ technology. Unlike previously documented cases, this attack compromises online Webmail accounts. In this case, when victims logged into their Webmail accounts (in this case, Hotmail®), they noticed that all their “sent” and “received” e-mails were deleted along with all their online contacts. The only message that remained was one from the attacker that requested they contact them for payment in order to receive the data back.
In this case, the victims had recently visited an Internet cafe where their credentials may have been compromised. The email, which was poorly written in Spanish, roughly translates in English to: "if you want to know where your contacts and your e-mails are then pay us or if you prefer to lose everything, then don't write soon!"
Although there has only been a single documented case of this new kind of threat, Websense security customers were immediately and automatically protected from it.
Resources: Learn more about Websense ThreatSeeker technology See the alert details from Websense Security Labs Read press coverage of the discovery