Nokia paid off extortionist in 2007: Finnish TV

A Finnish broadcaster has revealed that Nokia paid a ransom to keep the app-signing keys of its Symbian operating system secret, in an extortion case dating back to 2007. According to MTV News, the former mobe giant, whose Symbian phones were market leaders back in the day, paid out “millions of Euros” in the extortion. As El …

[BigFire]

Dane-geld

Once you paid the Dane-geld, you'll never be rid of Dane.

The proper response is to crush the Dane.

[Richard 12]

Re: Dane-geld

It sounds like that was the plan, but the cops screwed it up.

[Peter2]

Re: Dane-geld

Evidently they forgot to put either a tracker in the bag, or a liberal quantity of dye marker/explosives.

[Dan 55]

It might have got out anyway

Because IIRC there were dodgy servers in China that would sign anything for a fee and it'd work.

[Anonymous Coward]

Was it Nokia at the time?

I thought Symbian was pseudo-independent until 2008?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's probably worse than just pretending apps were official Nokia apps, those fake apps could possibly have been able to give themselves permissions to access absolutely everything in the phone (PlatSec).

Symbian apps had various levels of permissions, user apps had the least, 'professional' commercial apps could apply for some more, but some were reserved for the phone manufacturers themselves and would never have been given to anyone else.

[Snoremonster]

The ransom drop went into a steel bin, but the robbers had dug a hole under the bin where they took the money into an underground tube station. One police officer managed to chase the robbers onto a train and... oh, hold on

[Andus McCoatover]

Oh, c'mon. You're having a Giraffe, or what?

Supposed to be a "Drop-and-arrest operation" yep?

What fuc*king Plod'd use REAL money for that????

Oh, FFS!!!!

[mIRCat]

Where the rest of us get our news.

I'm just flabbergasted that it was MTv News that reported this.

Kurt Loder, where are you now?

[Steve Lampkins]

Re: Where the rest of us get our news.

That's the Finnish 'MTV', where the 'M' stands for 'Mainos' ('Commercial'). The Finnish equivalent of ITV in the UK.

[Andus McCoatover]

Just a thought....

Is that the real reason Symbian was shafted?

Looks like there's a lot of meat on this bone, yet....I vote the Orloski Rottweiler to be assigned to this, to "Kill, Maim, Disfigure!"

If anyone can get to the bottom of this, he can.