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Sneaky Blackmailing Virus That Encrypts Data
BaCa writes "Kaspersky Lab found a new variant of Gpcode which encrypts files with various extensions using an RSA encryption algorithm with a 1024-bit key. After Gpcode.ak encrypts files on the victim machine, it changes the extension of these files to ._CRYPT and places a text file named !_READ_ME_!.txt in the same folder. In the text file the criminal tells the victims that the file has been encrypted and offers to sell them a decryptor. Is this a look into the future where the majority of malware will function based on extortion?"
Question is, does the encryptor rewrite the data in-place, or just encrypt to a new file then delete the original? If the latter, the data is still recoverable with a simple undelete utility.
Seriously. In order for extortion to work, money has to change hands. Money can be traced, easily (don't believe what they say about Western Union). This is a great way to track down and capture the people who are spreading the virus. And the people whose files are encrypted could as easily have seen those files deleted, or worse. So it's no difference to them, except that they now have a hand in putting a crook behind bars.
The virus tossers are actually making their situation worse by turning to extortion. But they weren't all that bright to start with.
I don't know! Stop asking me those questions all the time. Is it obligatory to end every blurb with a question, or what?
Uh, if 1024-bit RSA was broken, the world of encryption security would collapse (at least for the short term). Could it happen? Sure, it's possible. Will it happen in time to save your pr0n collection? Highly unlikely.
For one thing, compromise of RSA encryption would render SSL useless.
The trust issue is that there is fundamentally no reason for the person receiving the money to follow through and send you the private keys to decrypt the data. If it was a known person, they'd be arrested, and since they're unknown there is no "reputational" factor that would make people more likely to pay based on the experience of others.
Just another moron criminal scheme from some douchebag who thinks he's found a get rich scheme. Just like other "genius" criminals, the fact is that the professionals in the field are smarter than the criminals.
This same thing happened in the late 80's (or maybe early 90's). Some hackers mailed a 5.25 inch floppy with some "free" software on it to thousands of people around the world. When you installed the software, it would hijack your PC and encrypt various files and you had to pay a ransom to get it back. There was a EULA and everything with the disk (which of course nobody read) which made it clear what would happen if you installed the disk. Perhaps someone can remember what it was called.
Joe User: Someone set us up the encryption. We get no data. Readme file turn on.
Jack Hacker: How are you gentlemen? All your data are belong to us.
I'm not going to worry about this.
I'm sure the fine folks of our Government are watching everything that happens on my computer & will promptly decrypt my files for me using their built-in back doors.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
My computer was infected by this virus... luckily all my files were already encrypted so all it did was make plain-text versions of everything and leave me a file asking for a donation
"We have encrypted your illegally copied music files. Put $5000 in unmarked bills in a plain brown paper sack and mail it to: RIAA Washington, D.C. no later than midnight tonight or you'll never listen to your music again"
The last version was eventually "cracked", because the virus used the same key for all the encrypted files so once someone paid up they could distribute the key.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
...the Casino Virus. Perhaps because of the similar concept of "holding data hostage".
The virus takes your FAT and stores it in RAM. Then lets you play a slot-machine game. If you win, you get your data back. If you lose, you lose your data. Some other combination of characters (in the slot machine) gives you the virus-writer's phone number.
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
This is data ransom, not blackmail.
Fortunately, brute force attacks aren't necessary. If one can read the memory space used by the 'decryptor' one can find the key in seconds.
this is why movie content will 'never' be immune to cracking. in the case of this virus, the decryptor is sent to you over the internet, if you pay the money, but having a good backup scheme also defeats the need to brute force. having a good security setup, should negate even the need for backups to prevent infection in the first place.
so always have a competent hardened firewall device like smoothwall express, never download attachments (webmail helps a lot in this arena, along with a secure browser, and a phishing aware user/browser add-on) avoid windows like the plague, but if you must run windows make sure it can only get access to the actual ports of the programs you actually use on it. and never run as administrator, unless you really genuinely need to do something that can't be done as a normal user.
trusting a 'commercial' 'hardware' router to protect a windows machine is insane, even if you've replaced the firmware with some variant of linux, it's Still Not hardened like smoothwall...
fine if you have all linux/bsd machines, but windows has as much security as the emperor had new clothes, even with a $$$ security suite. sad but true, only 0% of tested windows security software could stop 50/50 2006/2007 known rootkit/malware post install... the best was i think being able to remove 7/50 and 13/50, if it had actually gotten installed. specialized tools were also tested, not just suites.
the point being, if you must run windows remember that a piece of paper stands more chance of surviving a nuclear blast at point blank than windows has of being de-rooted without a format.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ransomware_(malware)
The crypting your files and extort has been around since 1989 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_Cyborg_Trojan
As it was pointed out by another poster, no 1024-bit RSA is not sufficiently strong. Recent papers have demonstrated that factoring a 1024-bit key is now within practical reach. See for example this PhD dissertation from a student whose advisor was Shamir (the S in RSA FYI), which estimates that cracking a 1024-bit key would cost a few million US dollars.
Sure, at this point only a small number of organizations have a few million dollars to spare on cracking RSA, but this is beyond the point. The flaw is sufficiently serious that security standards are now recommending 2048-bit RSA keys minimum.
What I am talking about are relatively recent developments, it is not very well-known that 2048-bit is the minimum recommended length. This is why 1024-bit keys are still wildly used everywhere. My bank (www.wellsfargo.com) uses a 1024-bit key...
in Nigeria?
There are real banks in Nigeria, owned by the ruling ethnic group, that's where the billions of dollars from oil goes. The rulers get their money while those who live where the oil comes from, the Niger Delta, have to fight for scraps.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I'll append a sarcasm tag next time. By the way, that bit of info is insanely depressing, and kind of made me feel a bit insensitive. Mod parent up.
Most people aren't going to have more than a hundred gigs or so of storage in their computer in the first place. Given a halfway-decent backup system -- one which uses hardlinks, as I mentioned before -- and yes, the OS might take half of the backup drive. It will not, however, need an additional half every incremental backup -- only every time the OS changes.
As most people aren't causing terabytes worth of change, it should be no problem to have many backups (as in, every day for the past few months) on a single, dirt-cheap external hard drive.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Banking in Nigeria is not significantly less reputable than anywhere else.
The problem with Nigerian scams is because there are a lot Nigerians, and a significant fraction of them do not trust random people they don't know from Adam (or in some cases, members of their own family) and think that "europeans" must be a bunch of illiterate cretins if they are willing to believe things they read in random e-mails from strangers, and hence deserve to be scammed.
The main factor in Nigerian fraud, is that part of the Nigerian population that believe that God created cretins so they could be scammed. Not a very christian beliefe:
Yes its true, Christianity would stop Nigerian scams - send more missionaries :-)
Yes, I have been to Nigeria.
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