South Korean police arrest computer repairmen who made and distributed ransomware
South Korean authorities have filed charges today against nine employees of a local computer repair company for creating and installing ransomware on their customers’ computers.
The scheme netted the suspects more than 360 million won ($321,000) in ransomware payments from 40 companies they serviced throughout 2020 and 2021.
Not all of the company’s employees were involved in the scheme, but only nine employees from the company’s Seoul offices.
According to police officials, the scheme got underway last year after some of the repair shop’s customers reached out to employees to help deal with ransomware infections that encrypted enterprise systems.
The rogue employees initially helped companies negotiate and pay ransoms and then decrypt affected systems. However, as attacks kept coming, police investigators said the rogue employees also began tampering with the encrypted computers they were contracted to service.
In at least 17 incidents, the employees modified ransom notes to inflate the original ransom demands in order to obtain larger funds from the victimized companies.
