Really scary computer viruses

When I first read the headline to this Associated Press story, "Hackers holding computer files 'hostage'," I didn't think much of it. But the researcher that pioneered cryptovirology writes in a new article that so-called "ransomware" is a really nasty technique that leverages public-key encryption for malicious purposes. While, infosec researcher Adam Young says the recent Pgpcoder Trojan is pretty lame, he warns about future automated attacks that implement cyrptographic technology more effectively.

Off the top of my head, I can think of a few implications regarding future cryptoviruses: people start storing their files online with companies that can afford sophisticated defenses, and backing-up data on a second hard drive is not such a bad idea.