LAS VEGAS — The growth of the Internet of Things will offer new ransomware opportunities for cybercriminals, according to a report released Thursday by Symantec.
Researchers were able repackage existing Android ransomware — Android.Simplocker — inside a new Android Wear project, and when the phone was infected, so was a paired smartwatch. Once executed, the ransomware made the watch unusable, and also encrypted files stored on the watch’s SD card.
Researchers said they haven’t seen any examples of this kind of ransomware in the wild yet.
According to a report by Symantec researcher Kevin Savage, cybercriminals switch their focus to a different malware type approximately every two or three years of reaching a peak.
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