Posted by Virus Bulletin on Jun 5, 2008
Kaspersky warns of new and nasty data-ransom trojan.
Malware analysts at Kaspersky Lab have warned of the return of the 'Gpcoder' trojan, a nasty piece of 'ransomware' which encrypts victims' files and demands money for the decryption key.
Previous outbreaks of the scam, seen sporadically since the first appearance of such nasties in 2004, have all been foiled by security experts, including Kaspersky's remarkable cracking of a 660-bit encryption key in 2006. The latest variant includes fixes for several flaws spotted in previous waves, and also 1024-bit encryption techniques, which have yet to be broken.
Kaspersky has received reports of infections from numerous victims. Details of the threat, including advice on remediation and the promise of updates in the event of further developments, are on the company's blog here.
Virus Bulletin suggests that readers keep secure backups of all sensitive or valuable data, at all times.
Posted on 05 June 2008 by Virus Bulletin
