Hackers Held Data on 5,000 Canadians Hostage and the Government Didn’t Tell Anyone

Last year, a clever piece of code grabbed the computers of a foreign company, and held them hostage — detaining information on 5,000 Canadian passport applicants in the process.

The malware demanded an undisclosed sum of money, or else all the computer’s data would be encrypted forever, effectively locking it and throwing away the key.