A new malware attack on American web users, as American-Romanian anti-virus company warns, occurred on October 27. More than 12,000 attempts been held in one week. New Trojan virus, which is more aggressive than its contemporaries, affects Windows storing data for ransom of 300$ bit coins. Unfortunately it spreads rapidly and targets American users only. The CryptoLocker virus affects hard disk demanding for ransom before 72 hours deadline.
It makes hard to track down virus’ creators as far as they use a complicated algorithm to generate new command and control subdomains every day. As soon as Bitdefender engineers have built counter algorithm to register the CryptoLocker domains before they disappeared.
The virus’ is being spread via FedEx and UPS tracking notifications, also emails as the legitimate business offer. As soon as it gets into one’s computer the CryptoLocker scans hard disc for documents, photos, videos and other content before it encrypts them. Than the malware launches a ransom warning window, enforcing user for an urgent 72 hours pay amount of 100$ or any other currency.
Being downloaded via email the virus infecting Windows 7, Vista, XP, or even Windows 8, or Macs. Between October 27 and November 1, 12,016 host intrusions occurred.
It does make sense to pay urgent request as soon as it won’t be done, all of the encrypted content will be restored from a PC.
As Bitdefender stated it is hard to determine the malware track because of CryptoLocker hackers are changing server quite frequently. After remaining one week the virus moved to another host, located by company monitoring in Russia, Germany, Kazakhstan and Ukraine. That actually makes it more difficult to detect the virus and capture the criminal hackers.
What if your antivirus didn’t detect the threat and your computer being infected by CryptoLocker, the only way to save the content is to get a decryption key, the CryptoLocker hackers make it very easy to do. All you need to do is to transfer amount of 2 BTC ($300), otherwise the sum will grow 10 times to 20 BTC.
The experts notify that: “Cracking these encryptions is not something that’s going to happen in the near future, even if we do catch them. Awareness is the first step,” they say. “Make sure your employees, or your family, know this virus is out there.”
