A criminal group has made at least $450,000 by infecting organizations with the Samas ransomware in the past year, according to an analysis by researchers from security firm Palo Alto Networks.
Read more on Bleeping Computer
Tag: Ransomware
The security landscape has evolved to a point where most IT threats occur with the intention of generating financial gain for their creators and financiers. Based on this premise, various attack or threat types have proliferated and evolved to affect a greater number of users and organizations. The cybercrime “business model” is based on creating a value chain that offers new methods, for example cybercrime as a service, that is, the practice of facilitating illegal activities via services. In other words, anyone could acquire everything they need to organize frauds or cyberattacks, whatever their skills or technical knowledge.
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Larry Abrams just reported: “Yesterday a new in-development ransomware was discovered by MalwareHunterTeam called Popcorn Time that intends to give victims a very unusual, and criminal, way of getting a free decryption key for their files. With Popcorn Time, not only can a victim pay a ransom to get their files back, but they can also try to infect two other people and have them pay the ransom in order to get a free key.
Read more on Know Be4
The ease and minimal expense of launching a ransomware “career” means that just about anyone, including those with little or no IT experience, can become a successful cyber criminal.
Read more on CSO Online
Over the weekend, riders of San Francisco’s municipal transit system (Muni) were allowed to travel for free because hackers had infected subway computers with ransomware. According to CSO Online, the attackers have demanded some $73,000 worth of bitcoin.
Read the full article on Motherboard
San Francisco’s transport system, known as Muni, was hit hard by a ransomware attack this weekend that forced the network to offer free rides to passengers. More than 2000 systems at the public transport agency are believed to have been hit, including Windows workstations, servers and ticketing machines.
Read the full article on Tripwire
From the bad guy’s perspective, advanced ransomware is highly lucrative with very little risk involved. The FBI estimates it will be a $1 Billion dollar ‘business’ in 2016. RSA did an analysis which gives us some insight in the money to be made.
Read the full blog post on Know Be4
In a surprise move, the master decryption keys for the CrySiS Ransomware have been released early this morning [November 14, 2016] in a post on the BleepingComputer.com forums. At approximately 1 AM EST, a member named crss7777 created a post in the CrySiS support topic at BleepingComputer with a Pastebin link to a C header file containing the actual master decryption keys and information on how to utilize them.
These keys have already been used by Kaspersky Labs to update their RakhniDecryptor program so that it can be used to decrypt victim’s files.
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Notorious ransomware Cerber appears to have changed focus of late, and now represents a major threat to corporate databases, according to security experts.
Full article via InfoSecurity Magazine
Cyber Security Intel 