Hackers use porn apps to extort cash from users

Hackers are using viruses disguised as pornographic mobile apps as “ransomware” to extort large sums of money from users whose devices are blocked until the ransom is paid.

While pornography has been used for some time by hackers to install malware on a device, the use of it to extort a ransom from the user is a newer phenomenon.

US internet security firm Zscaler has published details about the android app “Adult Player”. It discovered that the app lured victims to, what they assumed to be, a pornographic video player on their device.