Ransomware - The Third Largest Industry in Russia?
Energy, Mining, Cybercrime. Those are the top three, so says my neighbor. He is a top-level programmer and IT consultant with one of the biggest accounting firms in the world. The man knows his way around an algorithm. He's excited about the project he's on now, developing an absolutely fail-safe way to protect ourselves from ransomware. "It's 98% Russian operators. Very organized. Very professional operators. Ransomware is the third largest industry in Russia," the man said.
Then he gave me this tip: "Enable the Russian language on your computer." Most people don't know this but Windows lets you have multiple languages installed and enabled. If you are multi-lingual, you can switch to Swedish to write an email to your Granny in the old country, then switch back to your English or Spanish or Romanian.
When the hackers breach the computer's security system, the first thing they do is check for Russian. If the native language is installed on the computer, they back out. If they happen to hit one of Vlad's guy's computer, the hacker and his boss both might soon have an accidental fall from a very high window.
My uber-coder neighbor said enabling the language wouldn't prevent a bad guy from installing his criminal code, but most of them will back out and leave any computer with the Russian language turned on.
