Drive past the dairy farms, cornfields and horse pastures here and you will eventually arrive at Cate Machine & Welding, a small-town business run by Gene and Lori Cate and their sons. For 46 years, the Cates have welded many things — fertilizer tanks, jet-fighter parts, cheese molds, even a farmer’s broken glasses. And like many small businesses, they have a dusty old computer humming away in the back office. On this one, however, an unusual spy-versus-spy battle is playing out: The machine has been taken over by Chinese hackers.

It's no secret that ransomware is fast becoming a favourite of cybercriminals, and another report has confirmed the dizzying rise of this strain of malware. Apparently there are now over 120 different families of ransomware, and a massive 3,500% increase has been witnessed in the scope of the net infrastructure which criminals use to run ransomware stings.