Malware results in criminals accidentally turning themselves in

If there is a silver lining to malware, it is that is can – on occasion – result in real criminals inadvertently turning themselves into the police.

This happened twice in 2013, with one of those cases reaching its resolution this week.

That’s the case of Victor Anthony Noble who, whilst surfing the Internet, managed to get himself infected with malware. Well, ransomware to be exact.

Mr. Noble was not what you would describe as an innocent Internet surfer. On his computer he had a stash of some pretty extreme pornography including images involving animals and humans together. They were illegal images.

So getting infected with ransomware was far from ideal for Mr. Noble. Ransomware, for those that don’t know, is malware that informs the victim that their computer has been “locked” and the only way to retrieve access to your files is to pay a ransom. Hence the name.

Noble was hit with a pretty primitive version of ransomware. Unlike recent ransomware threats like CryptoLocker (which actually DID encrypt you data until you paid a ransom) earlier versions would simply try and prevent you from logging into your computer with a “lock screen”. However, for those who knew their way around a computer, these earlier versions were relatively easy to bypass and remove.

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Mr. Noble wasn’t familiar with ransomware however. And unluckily for him he had been hit with the popular “FBI” version, meaning that the lock screen appeared to have been produced by the FBI, when in fact it had nothing to do with them whatsoever.

Mr. Noble assumed the game was up, and turned himself into the police, assuming that the lock screen was there as a result of his dubious images. It wasn’t. His sentencing is this week.

An example of the FBI version of a ransomware infection that locks you out of your computer.

Perhaps on an even more serious note, the same year saw Jay Matthew Riley turn himself into police also. Only this time it was having images related to child pornography stored on his computer. Just like with the case of Mr. Noble, Mr. Riley has wrongfully assumed that the “FBI” variant of the ransomware infection he contracted was actually a genuine warning from the Feds.

He turned himself into his local police station and asked if there were any warrants on file for his arrest. The police had no idea what he was talking about, but quickly put the pieces of the puzzle together after Riley explained the situation. The police had warned the public about this type of ransomware only weeks prior.

So whilst for the rest of us, ransomware can be an extremely annoying obstacle, even causing irreversible damage, there is a silver lining to its existence out there, somewhere.