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Nokia was forced to pay a ransom to Symbian kidnappers

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Before Nokia smartphones were powered by the Windows Phone OS, Symbian was the trademark platform that ran on the company’s devices.

Symbian and Nokia were synonymous with one another; and at one point it was the dominant mobile phone OS on the market. With such popularity also comes unwanted attention, and for Nokia, it was in the form of code-snatching criminals.

In 2007, Nokia paid millions of euros to ransomers who threatened to release Symbian’s encryption passkey into the wild, giving anyone and everyone free access to Nokia’s golden child OS. The platform could have been attacked by viruses and all sorts of malicious activity.

Upon being threatened, Nokia succinctly called the police and set up an operation where they would have the ransomers pick up the money, and then be promptly arrested. However, something went wrong: the police ended up losing the suspects, along with the company’s money and encryption key.

The criminals were never caught and the case is still an open one. Symbian is pretty much open source now and not very much in demand when it comes to smartphone operating systems, but there was a time when it was the best smartphone OS on the market.

Source | Via

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