Most of us here remember Symbian, don’t we? Before Nokia went the Windows Phone way and it’s devices division got eventually acquired by Microsoft, Symbian was Nokia’s primary platform and it was the widely used mobile OS for quite a while. Being a popular OS brings its own qualms and reportedly, Nokia had to deal with some code stealing blackmailers.
Some code stealing criminals got hold of Symbian’s encryption key and asked Nokia for ransom in several million euros. Blackmailers threatened Nokia of releasing the encryption key to everyone, which would have made Symbian prone to viruses and all kinds of malicious activities.
Obviously, Nokia contacted the police in hope of catching the crooks while they were paying the ransom in Tampere’s parking lot. Sadly, that wasn’t to be, as police lost track of the suspects and thus, the money, the encryption key were all gone. The suspects were never caught and the case is still open.
Symbian is not a force in the mobile market anymore and Nokia had made the OS open-source, once its downfall had started. It surely was the best smartphone OS of it time and it was important enough for the Finnish giant to pay millions in ransom.
