Inside Cryptowall 2.0 Ransomware

msm1267 writes: If you need more evidence that ransomware is here to stay, and could turn into cybercriminals' weapon of choice, look no further than Cryptowall. Researchers at Cisco's Talos group have published an analysis of a Cryptowall 2.0 sample, peeling back many layers of known commodities around this threat, such as its use of the Tor anonymity network to disguise command-and-control communication. But perhaps more telling about the commitment around ransomware is the investment attackers made in its capabilities to detect execution in virtual environments, building in many stages of decryption present before the ransomware activates, and its ability to detect 32- and 64-bit architectures and executing different versions for each.

Comments

One more reason to get away from Windows

[Guybrush_T]

Using windows is currently a real nightmare for the average guy. Most of the computers of un-computer-educated people I know are full of malware and adware.

At some point it was seen as a fatality. iOS and Android just showed people that it was not. That's why Microsoft Windows is (finally) dying. Ransomware may be the thing that will decide people to finally switch to something else.

And maybe 2015 will be the year of linux on the desktop :-)