MTV News Investigative Team dug up Nokia's past and found that the Finnish phone maker paid several million Euros as ransom to blackmailers to protect the encryption key of Symbian phones.
Nokia, renowned mobile manufacturing company, gained unchallenged success with its once-dominant Symbian OS. But the success did not come easy and according to a report, the company had to pay a heavy price for its Symbian mobile operating system. According to the MTV News Investigative Team, the Finnish phone maker was a victim of extortion and paid several million Euros as ransom to blackmailers in late 2007.
Nokia's ransom to the blackmailers was supposedly in exchange for keeping Symbian's encryption key private. Imposters threatened to leak the encryption key to the world, exposing the OS to hackers and malware attacks, according to the Finnish MTV. Following the threat, Nokia contacted the police with hopes of arresting the criminals. A rendezvous with the blackmailers was arranged at a parking lot in Tampere, central Finland, to deliver the cash.
As planned, the money was picked up from the site but the police lost track of the culprits, MTV said. The case remains open at the National Bureau of Investigation.
"We are investigating felony blackmail, with Nokia the injured party," Detective Chief Inspector Tero Haapala said, according to Reuters, which also verified the blackmail case with the Finnish police.
With the lost encryption key and a bag full of money, it is still unknown how the source code ended up in the hands of the blackmailers. Had the key been exposed at the time, Nokia's smartphone market share, which was about 50 percent with the Symbian software, would have come crashing down with no takers.
In 2007, Nokia smartphones accounted for half of the global market share.
