Nokia 'paid millions to software blackmailers six years ago'
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Nokia 'paid millions to software blackmailers six years ago'
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Re: Nokia 'paid millions to software blackmailers six years ago'
#2'the money was delivered but the police lost track of the culprits'
A solid showing by the Helsinki police
Re: Nokia 'paid millions to software blackmailers six years ago'
#3'the money was delivered but the police lost track of the culprits' A solid showing by the Helsinki police
It's almost out of a movie. One of your larger national companies is being extorted and you fail to follow the people doing so?
It also had to be a pretty big vulnerability for them to have to pay that much in the first place.
Re: Nokia 'paid millions to software blackmailers six years ago'
#4'the money was delivered but the police lost track of the culprits' A solid showing by the Helsinki police
It's almost out of a movie. One of your larger national companies is being extorted and you fail to follow the people doing so? It also had to be a pretty big vulnerability for them to have to pay that much in the first place.
It makes it sound like it was the keys to the castle.
Re: Nokia 'paid millions to software blackmailers six years ago'
#5I always wondered how you do paperwork for something like this. It must be a nightmare from an accountant perspective. What is the bill code for "blackmail" when you file the income tax and you write a 6 figure expense. In the end your cash has to balance out, you cannot not declare it. Anybody with experience in something like this?
Re: Nokia 'paid millions to software blackmailers six years ago'
#6Wow, that's rough. Not much you can do against a vulnerability that'll destroy the trust of your entire customer base. A DDOS is one thing but I probably would have paid the millions in this case.
Re: Nokia 'paid millions to software blackmailers six years ago'
#7I always wondered how you do paperwork for something like this. It must be a nightmare from an accountant perspective. What is the bill code for "blackmail" when you file the income tax and you write a 6 figure expense. In the end your cash has to balance out, you cannot not declare it. Anybody with experience in something like this?
isn't there something fringe like 'theft' or miscellaneous losses?
Re: Nokia 'paid millions to software blackmailers six years ago'
#8I can fully see how this could happen. Too many companies don't understand the value of keys like this, and won't until they have a similar situation.
I wonder how exactly the criminals came to have them in the first place, but would be willing to bet it was ultimately incompetence by someone at Nokia.
Re: Nokia 'paid millions to software blackmailers six years ago'
#9'the money was delivered but the police lost track of the culprits' A solid showing by the Helsinki police
You can't exactly arrest them without one of their partners releasing the key. Following them might not end well either.
Re: Nokia 'paid millions to software blackmailers six years ago'
#10Wow, that's rough. Not much you can do against a vulnerability that'll destroy the trust of your entire customer base. A DDOS is one thing but I probably would have paid the millions in this case.
I wonder how much it would have cost to push out an update to all of the Symbian devices in the wild at the time. It wouldn't have been easy, and would have been a PR nightmare, but it could have been done.
The question is: would it have been worth it? I don't know, but hiding things rarely goes well. Then again, I don't know of any public instances where this has happened, but I'm sure Nokia aren't the only ones to have been hit by this.