Slashdot Mirror
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."
It's somehow inferior because it DOESN'T suffer from any of these issues, has better memory management, a better file system, has more people looking at the code (as is part of the point of being open-sourced) as opposed to only having the eyes of Microsoft looking things over (which is why we have these situations)...
LOL, so you post it from your Android phone (Linux) on a web site that runs on Linux.
2%??? Linux runs on 2.33% of the desktops (And that number is questionable), 54% of all smart phones, 68% of all tablets, 67% of all web servers, 99.4% of all supercomputers, and 28% of all mainframes. Not counting all the routers, switches, load balancers, Network appliances, and Network Attached Storage (NAS) units. Lets not forget that when someone says they are putting it in the "Cloud" there is a 98% chance that it is a Linux server because the "Cloud" runs on Linux.
When you look at the big picture, Linux is taking over the world while Microsoft is holding on to the desktop and there are signs that they are loosing hold of the desktop. So keep convening your self that windows is the solution t0 everything, the reset of the world has moved on to bigger better things.
Windows 10 sucks. Linux is better.