Wednesday, 2 July 2014
Blackmail
is a nasty business, but it's not just the stuff of movie plots: Nokia
was in 2008 forced to pay "several million euros" to criminals who held
its code to ransom, reports Reuters.
The
Finnish company found itself in difficulties six years ago, with
criminals apparently threatening to reveal the source code "for part of
an operating system used in its smartphones." In fact,according to
sources at Finnish MTV, they'd obtained the encryption key for Symbian
and were threatening to make it public.
It
was enough to allow them to extort "several million euros" from Nokia.
Like something straight out of Hollywood, Nokia apparently found itself
agreeing to deliver the cash to a parking lot in Tampere, central
Finland—though it did so only once it had alerted the police to what was
happening.
Reuters claims
that the money was picked up, but that the police "lost track of the
culprits." The Finnish police has confirmed to Reuters that it's
currently investigating a case of alleged blackmail against Nokia. 
