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"The phishing email topics that lead to infestation by ransomware are very specific," McAfee Labs explains. "The email template and attachment names appear not only in the local language but also pretend to be coming from real companies in the targeted countries."Ransomware, some variants of which demand between $150 and $500 for victims to retrieve their encrypted files, has seen an increase despite an international law enforcement effort last year that took down the Gameover ZeuS botnet, which was responsible for helping to spread the CryptoLocker ransomware.
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“With the popularity of a product like Flash, there comes a tremendous responsibility to proactively identify and mitigate security issues potentially threatening millions of users,” said Vincent Weafer, senior vice president, McAfee Labs. “This research nicely illustrates how the tech industry works together constructively to gain an advantage in the realm of cybersecurity – industry partners sharing threat intelligence, and technology providers acting on information quickly to help prevent potential issues.”To learn more about ransomware, including how you can protect yourself and your computer against this type of malware, please click here. To read McAfee's report in full, click here.