You have been called to the office of the CEO for a confidential meeting. In the meeting the CEO informs you he 'has a virus that won't let him login without paying a fee.' You begin to investigate the issue and find that the CEO downloaded a file from a website a friend shared on a social media site. After downloading the file his computer restarted and now will not allow anyone to login unless they enter credit card information. Which option best describes the attack used in this scenario based on the information available?

The CEO downloaded and executed Ransomware
A botnet is attacking the CEO's computer and disabling login attempts
The CEO executed a Rootkit which gave backdoor access to a hacker
The CEO was the target of a spear phishing social engineering attack

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Answer Description

This type of malware is called Ransomware. It holds data or information ransom until a fee is paid after which point it will return the information or data (or so it says...). Based on the information available in the question this is the only conclusion we can make. It is possible as the CEO of the company they were targeted specifically via social media (spear phishing) but there isn't definitive evidence of this yet.

Wikipedia

Ransomware is a type of malware from cryptovirology that threatens to publish the victim's personal data or permanently block access to it unless a ransom is paid off. While some simple ransomware may lock the system without damaging any files, more advanced malware uses a technique called cryptoviral extortion. It encrypts the victim's files, making them inaccessible, and demands a ransom payment to decrypt them. In a properly implemented cryptoviral extortion attack, recovering the files without the decryption key is an intractable problem – and difficult to trace digital currencies such as paysafecard or Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are used for the ransoms, making tracing and prosecuting the perpetrators difficult. Ransomware attacks are typically carried out using a Trojan disguised as a legitimate file that the user is tricked into downloading or opening when it arrives as an email attachment. However, one high-profile example, the WannaCry worm, traveled automatically between computers without user interaction.Starting as early as 1989 with the first documented ransomware known as the AIDS trojan, the use of ransomware scams has grown internationally. There were 181.5 million ransomware attacks in the first six months of 2018. This record marks a 229% increase over this same time frame in 2017. In June 2014, vendor McAfee released data showing that it had collected more than double the number of ransomware samples that quarter than it had in the same quarter of the previous year. CryptoLocker was particularly successful, procuring an estimated US$3 million before it was taken down by authorities,

Ransomware - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia