What do you do when you supply around 50% of the cellphones in the world and you’re faced with a potential problem so large that it could threaten every one of those phones, no matter where they are in the world? If a report from MTV Finland is correct, then Nokia paid a multimillion-euro ransom sometime in late 2007, or early 2008, to avoid just such a threat to its Symbian ecosystem.
The story goes that Nokia was approached by a group of extortionists who managed to convince the smartphone manufacturer that they had obtained the digital signing keys for the Symbian app store that would allow any app to be considered properly vetted for deeper access to Symbian’s systems.
While Nokia has so far refused to give comment about the incident, probably because its executives are busy briefing their new Microsoft bosses about it, the Finnish police have been forthcoming to both MTV and Reuters. “We are investigating felony blackmail, with Nokia the injured party,” detective chief inspector Tero Haapala said, before declining to give any further details on the case.
Nokia involved the Finish police service in the matter and after assurances that paying the ransom would result in the key not being abused, they agreed to deliver the cash to an amusement park’s parking lot in Tampere, central Finland.
The perpetrators who were never caught by the police. They picked up the money and the code was (more than likely) never used to perform anything too malicious.
[Source – MTV Finland, Image – Shutterstock]
