I have often written about imporster scams where scammers pose as legitimate companies or government agencies that you know and trust in an effort to lure you into providing personal information or making a payment under some pretext.  Now, in an unusual twist on the usual imposter scam, the FBI is warning people about scammers posing as members of the infamous Russian ransomware gang BianLian. The real BianLian Group has developed ransomware and deploys it to unsuspecting companies and threatens to destroy their data or make embarrasing data public unless a ransom is paid.  The phony BianLian scammers are sending snail mail letters to business executives telling them that they have infiltrated their companies’ computers and have stolen sensitive data files whtih they threaten to make public unless the targeted victim of the scam uses a QR code included in the letter to pay a ransom of between $250,000 and $500,000.   According to the FBI, the letters have been mailed from Boston.  The FBI says that there is no indication that the scammers sending these letters are in any way connected to the real BianLian Group or have infiltrated the computers of their targeted victims.

TIPS

Anyone receiving such a letter should first confirm through their security software that their computers have not been infected with malware although the chances of their being infected by the scammers sending this letter is pretty much non-existent. Ransomware, which is most often downloaded through links in spear phishing emails, delivers a notice to the screens of the targeted victims that their data has been stolen and encrypted and cannot be accessed by the targeted victim.

This scam does serve as a reminder to protect yourself from ransomware and other types of malware sent as links or attachments to emails or text messages by never clicking on links or downloading attachments unless you have absoluetly confirmed that they are legitimate.

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