National Crime Agency of UK and CERT of USA issues alert on CryptoLocker ransomware
CryptoLocker is a particularly nasty piece of ransomware malware. Once it has infected a machine, it searches for files of any of 70-odd formats, including Word documents, PDFs and Excel spreadsheets - the kind of files no one wants to lose - and then starts to encrypt them using an RSA-2048 public key.
Once this has been done, the user is shown a message that demands a ransom payment for the decryption of the files. The ransom was US$300 in earlier versions of the malware, but has since increased to two bitcoins - the price of bitcoins continues to rise, and yesterday exceeded $500 for a single bitcoin.
The message demands that the payment be made within 72 hours - although the crooks behind the malware have now included a late payment option whereby the victim has the option to retrieve the files for a payment of 10 bitcoins after the initial deadline has passed.
Full read: Virus Bulletin Blog.
Related reads:
Block or prevent Cryptolocker ransomware attacks with CryptoPrevent
HitmanPro.Alert Review: Free Ransomware Protection & Browser Intrusion Detection Tool.
