Coimbatore : Through a recent complaint lodged by a photo studio owner in the city, it has come to light that several lakhs of money has been swindled by hackers who inject viruses in the computers of photo studios and later blackmail of erasing the files.
Coimbatore : Through a recent complaint lodged by a photo studio owner in the city, it has come to light that several lakhs of money has been swindled by hackers who inject viruses in the computers of photo studios and later blackmail of erasing the files.
Muthukumar runs a studio in Avarampalayam, Coimbatore. On March 2, 2019 he was shocked to find his computer used for editing files, like wedding photos, and professional events was hacked. And all the 3TB files in the folder were deleted.
Due to the incident, he was put under immense pressure as he had to deliver photos and videos to his clients. Meanwhile, after a few days, the hackers contacted Muthukumar via email asking him to pay $970 to restore the files.
The repeated e-mail from the hackers alerted Muthukumar who decided to escalate the issue to the police. He registered a complaint at the crime branch which was forwarded by the DC of crime branch to the Cyber Crime department.
Upon investigation, it was found that around 150 studios in various districts of Tamil Nadu such as Krishnagiri, Salem, Karur and Chennai have undergone similar hacking, and the studio owners were threatened by the hackers for a ransom.
The affected studio owners also revealed that the hackers offered them discounts and repeatedly threatened of erasing the source files. It is said that the hackers quoted ransom amount based on the sales of the studio.
The studio owners have jointly urged the Cyber Crime Department to nab the hackers behind this unethical act.