One day in Melbourne, when the sun was out and the birds were singing, Matt opened an email and was greeted with a video of a man wanking.

The man was him.

"There I was in all my glory," he told triple j's Veronica & Lewis.

He had been hacked. A 'ransomware' program had infected his computer allowing the hackers to film him through the webcam. He had been filmed in a compromising situation.

Now they wanted money.

"There was an email saying they were going to release footage to all my Facebook friends and people I worked with if I don't pay them money."

"Initially I laughed."

He wrote back. He told them to do their worst and release the footage. But then they replied with a screenshot of his Facebook friends, and personal details from his website. He realised the threat was serious. They asked for $10,000. He began negotiating.

Is this a thing now?

Matt may have been feeling very much alone, but in fact he was part of an emerging trend of ransomware attacks in Australia.

Exact statistics are difficult to come by, as many people who are attacked don't go to police or make their situation public. Security software companies, who may have an interest in exaggerating the threat, say they have detected vast numbers of attacks.

According to one, there were more than 200,000 ransomware attacks in Australia in April-May alone this year. According to another, there were more than one million instances of a single kind of ransomware (CryptoLocker) in Australia in October last year.

It said these attacks resulted in millions of dollars of ransom payments.

The statistics from Australia's very own government cybercrime initiative are a lot lower. It recorded about 4,000 reports of 'scams or fraud' cybercrime in a three-month period at the end of last year.

Basically 'cybercrime' is hard to quantify and we don't have a clear picture. Instead, what we have is a bunch of widely varying statistics and some not very helpful but quite scary and exciting maps showing cyber attacks as they occur around the globe.

Perhaps our most trusty resource for knowing what's going on in the suburban bedrooms and student share-houses of Australia is the good ol' triple j textline:

"I'm a cop in NSW, this happens all the time, a few weeks ago I had three guys in one day come in to report the same thing.. Not much we can do when the baddies live overseas. Feel for you silly boys."

"The exact same thing happened to me, but I transferred around $1000 via wire transfer to the person in the Ukraine. Now in hindsight I know it was the wrong thing to do, but I was tunnel visioned by fear and panic at the time. Nothing ever was sent out online, but I've now had to change my Facebook account name, shut down my LinkedIn out of fear of my work details being revealed and I'm afraid of what may arise in the future should I want to build a LinkedIn profile etc again."

"I had the exact same thing happen to me. Sent me a list of all my contacts and a copy of the video. I stressed out for a while, called the cops they said they couldn't do anything about it. So I ended up bluffing them and said I told everyone that matters to me about the video and couldn't afford to pay them. So they never sent the video."

"My sister in law had to pay ransom to save her online business - her entire livelihood was locked up by these criminals and she felt she had no option but to pay them."

"Our uni got hit with this and so many crew were rumored to get blackmailed."

Thanks triple j textline.

Then we heard from Brendan, a caller whose friend had been blackmailed after meeting a girl online, chatting with her by video, and then being filmed wanking.

"By the time he got to calling us he was basically ready to transfer them all the money he had," Brendan said. "He was pretty embarrassed but the fear of something happening overpowered the embarrassment."

Brendan managed to talk his friend down. He took the phone and messaged the the girl pretending to be a police officer. That was the last they heard.

"I tried to send them the most official message I could," he said.

"I don't know if they ever did buy it."

Just put tape over the camera. It's easy

Apparently this is what Mark Zuckerberg does:

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Whatsapp Mark Zuckerberg's laptop's webcam and microphone appear to be taped over.

Which makes you think it's a good idea. But taping over the camera doesn't prevent all kinds of ransomware. It won't block the microphone, meaning conversations or *other noises* could still be recorded and stolen, and it won't stop someone locking up your files.

Philip Seltsikas, a cyber-security expert and associate professor from Sydney, told Veronica & Lewis there was no sure way of defending against ransomware.

He said there were probably a lot more computers infected than we know.

"There's a lot more people than we know because there could be hackers in big centers watching video streams just waiting for something to happen," he said.

This is nuts. Professor Seltsikas said hackers on the other side of the world were watching thousands of Australians through their webcams, and waiting for them to have a wank.

Actually, turns out there's a site where you can already watch the live footage of thousands of CCTV cameras from all over the world.

"All of our computers might currently be infected," the professor said. "If you are worried you should clean the computer, wipe the hard disk and reinstall the operating system."

Simple.

So what happened to Matt?

The hackers, who wrote every second email in French, wanted Matt to send the money to Mali in west Africa. He bartered them down from $10,000 to $3,000.

But then he suddenly changed his mind. He posted this message on Facebook:

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Whatsapp Matt's Facebook post.

"I put up a Facebook post and let everyone know I was hacked," he said.

"I let them know they got me in a private moment and they threatened to release a video unless I paid them money. I let everyone know if they get a link to be careful if they click on it, but if they do watch the video, then enjoy."

"It's not something to be ashamed of."

"It wasn't an easy post to put up."

He then had to tell his work colleagues as well. This was awkward, but they told him they had his back, and didn't hear from the ransomware hackers again.

Professor Seltsikas described Matt's strategy as "super brave".

"My own opinion is to not engage at all with the hackers. I wouldn't reply."