Russian Police Know Who Wrote Gpcode Virus

rifles only writes "Russian police almost certainly know the identity of the programmer responsible for the frightening 'ransomware' crypto virus, Gpcode, which has hit the Internet several times since 2006, says a story at Techworld, which has tapped a Kaspersky Lab researcher. Gpcode used 1024-bit RSA/128-bit RC4 to lock up victims' data, an uncrackable combination that left the world with only one solution: find the virus author to get the master key. So why don't the cops do anything? Good question, but this is Russia we're talking about."

Comments

what?

[SolusSD]

"Good question, but this is Russia we're talking about." ?? Someone care to enlighten me what that was about?

Re:what?

[MoonlightSeraphim]

The implication is that the ... government ... protects those with money or ties to money.

now if we look at it this way it is not much different from any other government.

Re:what?

[mdm42]

Not at all like a $700-billion hand^H^H^H^H bailout to a bunch of rich fuckers who ripped you off in the first place, then...

Re:what?

[The Master Control P]

Fools act because something must be done.
The wise act because they have something to do.

In any case, the question is how to survive the Subprime Mortgate Plane's crash-landing. In the short term, the fallout has left credit markets paralyzed with fear and waiting for the market to unjam itself would most likely prove unpalatably painful. If we aren't to act until we have a solution, what do you propose that we may act?

Long term, obviously, the solution is to bring back the regulation that stopped this nonsense from happening in the first place. Time and time again, we've seen that the markets are great at setting short-term prices and astonishingly, abysmally bad at planning for the future (witness the subprime ponzi scheme). Back in the thoroughly unregulated Robber Baron era, we'd have bank runs and financial panics like this literally every 5-10 years. Since the markets clearly can't regulate themselves to prevent this kind of screwup, the government needs to step in and do so. But this is long-term prevention to keep the Subprime Mortgage Plane from ever taking off again; What do we do now that we're stuck on it?

Re:what?

[The Master Control P]

Hearing this kind of nonsense in response to criticism of broken governments really gets old after a while. When our officials tell big business to fuck off, they run smear ads during the next election. When Russian officals tell Gazprom to fuck off, or journalists criticize Putin's government, they tend to die of extreme cranial bullet trauma.

It's like people who complain about Bernanke's inflationary policies when Zimbabwe is discussed. Does anyone actually think these are comparable?

Re:what?

[MightyYar]

Long term, obviously, the solution is to bring back the regulation that stopped this nonsense from happening in the first place.

As much as it pains me to admit it, it looks like people suck at finance. Everyday people are responsible for this mess by taking on mortgages they couldn't afford. Banks are responsible because they bought risky debt from brokers who had no reason NOT to grant loans. Insurers are responsible because they underwrote this horrid debt.

But government regulation is also at fault here. The government encouraged high-risk loans. That did us no favors in this situation. Without Fannie and Freddie, there'd be a whole lot fewer bad loans. So we have to be careful how we structure any regulation.

Re:what?

[Bryan Ischo]

I don't know very much about the actual causes of this issue, however I do find it really annoying that someone must invariably turn the discussion into an "it's the Democrats' fault! No, it's the Republicans' fault!" waste of time. You cited only Democratic presidents (and president hopefuls) in your post. I find it VERY hard to believe that there isn't blame to be place on just about every politician out there, regardless of party. So why do you feel the need to try to make this issue partisan? It's attitudes like yours that turn intelligent discussion into useless time sinks, which is the root cause of the USA's political environment being so dysfunctional.

In short: if voters use their brains, then they will elect politicians who use their brains. You are encouraging voters not to use their brains with arguments like yours. So you and people like you are the real root of the problem.

Goodfellas

[pete-classic]

So why don't the cops do anything?

And when the cops assigned a whole army to stop Jimmy, what did he do?

He made them partners.

-Peter

Changes in the wind.

[Ostracus]

"According to Kaspersky, stopping ransomware-based malware in the future will require more effective law enforcement, the use of forensic software analysis to tie suspects to their malevolent creations, and possibly building restrictions into the Windows cryptographic software libraries used to create Gpcode itself."

This concerns me more than what the cops do as pointed out in the story there's the difficulty of getting the money back to the ransomware author.

Re:Changes in the wind.

[jimicus]

"According to Kaspersky, stopping ransomware-based malware in the future will require more effective law enforcement, the use of forensic software analysis to tie suspects to their malevolent creations, and possibly building restrictions into the Windows cryptographic software libraries used to create Gpcode itself."

Then Kaspersky are idiots - any malware author with half a brain will simply statically link their code with a stripped down OpenSSL library.

So why don't the cops do anything?

[Richard_at_work]

Good question, but this is Russia we're talking about.

Theres a world of difference between knowing who did something, and having enough proof to be able to arrest them, charge them and convict them.

but how does it work?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a good point someone brought up. In the situation of ransom, how
will it ever work?
If large amount of funds are transferred by bank, they can
find and freeze the bank account.
If large amount of funds are transferred in cash,
the money can be traced so you would be caught if you use it.

So What is the the point in ransoming in the current era? There must be
something I am missing.

Simple

[Shivetya]

It is implied that in Russia there are no rights, if the government wants something or someone it doesn't think twice about getting it regardless of the ramifications.

Of course that is not much different from Western Countries, we just like to pretend otherwise.

Re:Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, isn't this the modern Russia which has imprisoned and shut down all free media, poisoned the Ukranian head of state, also brazenly poisoning people in other countries. Holds Europe hostage with its petroleum, and Putin is now head of state for life.

When the NYT's has a regime change by Bush after printing something unflattering to him, then come tell me that there is no difference.

Re:So why don't the cops do anything?

[Eg0Death]

Probably along the lines of this article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/07/AR2006040701972.html [washingtonpost.com]

The picture this arcticle paints leads me to believe that proof is optional in the arrest, charge, convict process.

Re:The enemy of my enemy is my friend

[billcopc]

Yet again the summary misleads, but it's no secret the Russian authorities don't have the resources to investigate anything of importance, and that problem leads to the iconic corruption that brings it full-circle.'

Re:The enemy of my enemy is my friend

[lysergic.acid]

you mean not everything bad that happens is a communist plot?

on a more interesting note, TFA states that yahoo has refused to cooperate with law-enforcement on this case on "privacy grounds." but didn't they hand over the user info on several Chinese dissidents, which led to an American national being falsely imprisoned?

i guess Yahoo will protect a user's privacy as long as they're a malicious criminal, but not if they're a prisoner of conscience. i guess it's time for me to close up my Yahoo! mail account for good.

Re:RC4 is broken, not unbeatable..

[Kardos]

If RC4 is broken and "badly so", where is the recovery tool to find the keys?

Re:The enemy of my enemy is my friend

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, whenever someone starts a sentence with "it's no secret that" or "everybody knows that" or something similar, whatever follows will be a lie.