Various strains of ransomware have been responsible for a number of recent, high-profile cyberattacks. While the word has been used since 1988, this week the dictionary finally added it — and over 1,100 new entries — to the ranks of more than 829,000 words.
Oxford calls ransomware “a type of malicious software designed to block access to a computer system until a sum of money is paid,” adding that “some of the most common forms of ransomware are designed to encrypt the user’s data and to display a message threatening permanently to delete it or publish it online if a ransom is not paid within a certain amount of time.”
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