Bitcoin extortionists have been around for a while, and have managed to become a constant threat to the market during the last couple of months. So far, hundreds of extortion attempts have been reported, where hackers infected the computers of individuals and companies, blocked access to their data, and then asked for a certain amount of money to be paid in bitcoin, to regain access to the PCs in question.

However, most of the attacks that took place until now, weren’t handled by the same author, and did not infect too many computers. Until a few days ago, when a new ransomware attack known by the name of WannaCry managed to infect hundreds of thousands of computers from all around the world.

Unfortunately, during the last couple of months, cyber-attacks and ransom attempts have become significantly more common, given the raising popularity of bitcoin as a ransomware payment method.

In fact, a study carried out among a number of UK companies has revealed that many of them have begun building a bitcoin reserve meant to pay off cyber-criminals in case their businesses are attacked. To put things better into perspective, according to the numbers that were crushed into place by the Citrix and Censuswide companies, which managed to question a total of 250 UK IT companies and their respective security managers, it seems like 1 in 3 UK IT companies has a bitcoin reserve meant to be used for this purpose.

During the last couple of months, there have been numerous reports of extortionist attempts, which consist of hackers getting into your system, and locking you out of the possibility of viewing personal information. Usually, the only way to regain access to your personal information would be to provide the hackers with a ransom, usually sent via bitcoin.

Recent reports indicate that a Hollywood-based hospital was the target of such an attempt a couple of days ago. Based on this, the attack started on the fifth of February, when the staff of the Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital noticed that they were unable to access their network and the afferent files stored on it. Once this happened, the tech team at the institution was informed that they have been the target of an extortion attack, and that the only way to regain access to the files would be to pay hackers a total of 40 bitcoin, worth around $17,000.

It’s widely known that the Bitcoin technology is quite dangerous when used by criminals, as it offers them a way of offering and accepting payments, while making it difficult to be tracked by the police.

Well, according to the latest reports, it seems like two popular ransomware strains known by the names of CoinVault and BitCryptor have been eliminated thanks to a joint effort carried out by law enforcement in the Netherlands alongside with an independent firm that deals with cybersecurity.