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New Ransomware Poses As A Windows Update (hothardware.com)
Slashdot reader MojoKid quotes an article from Hot Hardware: A security researcher for AVG has discovered a new piece of ransomware called Fantom that masquerades as a critical Windows update. Victims who fall for the ruse will see a Windows screen acting like it's installing the update, but what's really happening is that the user's documents and files are being encrypted in the background...
The scam starts with a pop-up labeled as a critical update from Microsoft. Once a user decides to apply the fake update, it extracts files and executes an embedded program called WindowsUpdate.exe... As with other EDA2 ransomware, Fantom generates a random AES-128 key, encrypts it using RSA, and then uploads it to the culprit. From there, Fantom targets specific file extensions and encrypts those files using AES-128 encryption... Users affected by this are instructed to email the culprit for payment instructions.
While the ransomware is busy encrypting your files, it displays Microsoft's standard warning about not turning off the computer while the "update" is in progress. Pressing Ctrl+F4 closes that window, according to the article, "but that doesn't stop the ransomware from encrypting files in the background."
The scam starts with a pop-up labeled as a critical update from Microsoft. Once a user decides to apply the fake update, it extracts files and executes an embedded program called WindowsUpdate.exe... As with other EDA2 ransomware, Fantom generates a random AES-128 key, encrypts it using RSA, and then uploads it to the culprit. From there, Fantom targets specific file extensions and encrypts those files using AES-128 encryption... Users affected by this are instructed to email the culprit for payment instructions.
While the ransomware is busy encrypting your files, it displays Microsoft's standard warning about not turning off the computer while the "update" is in progress. Pressing Ctrl+F4 closes that window, according to the article, "but that doesn't stop the ransomware from encrypting files in the background."
I hate people who do this. If you can write software, you can have a comfortable life without doing shit like this. What a waste.
I still struggle to understand the portion of the brain that drives tribalism. It gives rise to a long list of the rather irrational emotional responses of
- my sports team great your sports team bunch of cheating losers even though they're statistically identical.
- My religion good yours bad even though to an outside they're nearly indistinguishable except you spin clockwise rather than counter clockwise on alternate Tuesdays.
- My political party good yours bad even though neither is driven by anything other than the self interests of the party itself and their leaders.
- My OS good yours bad even though they're simply very complicated hammers for different nails.
- My race good your race bad even though genetically they're indistinguishable.
Some people simply seem to have a brain with stronger response wiring. From an evolutionary standpoint there's utility in having such varied response since it affects churn rate when two populations come into contact, still it'd be nice if we could tamp it down some, it's sliding from useful to dangerous in terms of utility.