People should not open emails appearing to be from the Ministry of Justice or the Home Office, the government has warned, after phishing attacks disguised themselves as official emails from the departments.
Hackers targeted victims with the TorrentLocker ransomware by sending it out in emails pretending to be about an upcoming court case.
If any links in the email are clicked upon, it downloads TorrentLocker, which encrypts all the files on the computer and victims are told to make a payment to unlock the files.
The fraudulent campaign was uncovered by the City of London Police's National Fraud Intelligence Bureau, which then advised the government.
The Home Office said that it does not send unsolicited emails and would never ask for personal information or passwords to be sent via email. Therefore, it advised anyone receiving an email claiming to be from them to be vigilant and treat it as suspicious.
"You can check the security of a website by ensuring that the web address uses https://'. All links in emails from the Home Office will be to a government service on a .gov.uk domain and will use https," it said.
"Alternatively, do not open attachments in emails you deem suspicious and do not reply to emails soliciting personal information."
There have been numerous similar attacks over the last few months as reports of ransomware incidents are on the rise.
Criminals are now looking for new ways to distribute malware and according to Damballa's Q2 2015 State of Infections report, hackers are increasingly using click fraud to not only demand money from web users, but also to drain advertisers' revenues.
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