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If your computer has been infected with Thanatos Ransomware and you are searching for a free ransomware decryption tool to unlock or decrypt your files—your search is over here. Security researchers at Cisco Talos have discovered a weakness in the Thanatos ransomware code that makes it possible for victims to unlock their Thanatos encrypted files for free without paying any ransom in cryptocurrencies. Like all ransomware threats, Thanatos encrypts files and asks victims to pay for ransom in multiple cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin Cash, to decrypt their files. "Multiple versions of Thanatos have been leveraged by attackers, indicating that this is an evolving threat that continues to be actively developed by threat actors with multiple versions having been distributed in the wild," the researchers say.  "Unlike other ransomware commonly being distributed, Thanatos does not demand ransom payments to be made using a single cryptocurrency like bitcoin. Inste

Security researchers have spotted the first-ever ransomware exploiting Process Doppelgänging , a new fileless code injection technique that could help malware evade detection. The Process Doppelgänging attack takes advantage of a built-in Windows function, i.e., NTFS Transactions, and an outdated implementation of Windows process loader, and works on all modern versions of Microsoft Windows OS, including Windows 10. Process Doppelgänging attack works by using NTFS transactions to launch a malicious process by replacing the memory of a legitimate process, tricking process monitoring tools and antivirus into believing that the legitimate process is running. If you want to know more about how Process Doppelgänging attack works in detail, you should read this article  I published late last year. Shortly after the Process Doppelgänging attack details went public, several threat actors were found abusing it in an attempt to bypass modern security solutions. Security researchers

The introduction of Open AI's ChatGPT was a defining moment for the software industry, touching off a GenAI race with its November 2022 release. SaaS vendors are now rushing to upgrade tools with enhanced productivity capabilities that are driven by generative AI. Among a wide range of uses, GenAI tools make it easier for developers to build software, assist sales teams in mundane email writing, help marketers produce unique content at low cost, and enable teams and creatives to brainstorm new ideas.  Recent significant GenAI product launches include Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, and Salesforce Einstein GPT. Notably, these GenAI tools from leading SaaS providers are paid enhancements, a clear sign that no SaaS provider will want to miss out on cashing in on the GenAI transformation. Google will soon launch its SGE "Search Generative Experience" platform for premium AI-generated summaries rather than a list of websites.  At this pace, it's just a matter of a short time befo

Ransomware has been around for a few years, but it has become an albatross around everyone's neck, targeting big businesses, hospitals, financial institutions and individuals worldwide and extorting millions of dollars. Last year, we saw some major ransomware outbreaks, including WannaCry  and  NotPetya , which wreaked havoc across the world, hitting hundreds of thousands of computers and business networks worldwide. From small to mid-range businesses, Microsoft Office 365 remains the most widely used and fastest-growing work office suite, so it's no surprise that it has become a primary target for viruses, ransomware, and phishing scams. In fact, most strains of ransomware target Microsoft productivity apps such as Word, Excel and encrypt sensitive data to hold the company hostage until the ransom is paid. Now, to combat such cyber attacks, Microsoft has announced some new security features for Office 365 that can help users mitigate the damage done by ransomware a

Remember how some cybercriminals shut down most of Washington D.C. police's security cameras for four days ahead of President Donald Trump's inauguration earlier this year? Just a few days after the incident, British authorities arrested two people in the United Kingdom, identified as a British man and a Swedish woman, both 50-year-old, on request of U.S. officials. But now US federal court affidavit  has revealed that two Romanian nationals were behind the attack that hacked into 70% of the computers that control Washington DC Metropolitan Police Department's surveillance camera network in January this year, CNN reports. The two suspects—Mihai Alexandru Isvanca, 25, and Eveline Cismaru, 28—were arrested in Bucharest on December 15 on charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and various forms of computer fraud. According to the criminal complaint unsealed in Washington, the pair hacked 123 of the Metropolitan Police Department's 187 outdoor surveillance c

Romanian police have arrested five individuals suspected of infecting tens of thousands of computers across Europe and the United States in recent years by spreading two infamous ransomware families—Cerber and CTB Locker. Under Operation Bakovia —a major global police operation conducted by Europol, the FBI and law enforcement agencies from Romanian, Dutch, and the UK—raided six houses in East Romania and made five arrests, Europol said on Wednesday. Authorities have seized a significant amount of hard drives, external storage, laptops, cryptocurrency mining devices, numerous documents and hundreds of SIM cards during the raid. One thing to note is that all of the five suspects were not arrested for developing or maintaining the infamous ransomware strains, but for allegedly spreading CTB Locker and Cerber. Based on CryptoLocker, CTB Locker , aka Critroni, was the most widely spread ransomware families in 2016 and was the first ransomware to use the Tor anonymizing network

A massive malicious email campaign that stems from the world's largest spam botnet Necurs is spreading a new strain of ransomware at the rate of over 2 million emails per hour and hitting computers across the globe. The popular malspam botnet Necrus which has previously found distributing Dridex banking trojan , Trickbot banking trojan , Locky ransomwar e, and Jaff ransomware , has now started spreading a new version of Scarab ransomware. According to F-Secure , Necurs botnet is the most prominent deliverer of spam emails with five to six million infected hosts online monthly and is responsible for the biggest single malware spam campaigns. Scarab ransomware is a relatively new ransomware family that was initially spotted by ID Ransomware creator Michael Gillespie in June this year. Massive Email Campaign Spreads Scarab Ransomware According to a blog post published by security firm Forcepoint, the massive email campaign spreading Scarab ransomware virus started at

Earlier this month a cybersecurity researcher shared details of a security loophole with The Hacker News that affects all versions of Microsoft Office, allowing malicious actors to create and spread macro-based self-replicating malware. Macro-based self-replicating malware, which basically allows a macro to write more macros, is not new among hackers, but to prevent such threats, Microsoft has already introduced a security mechanism in MS Office that by default limits this functionality. Lino Antonio Buono, an Italian security researcher who works at InTheCyber , reported a simple technique (detailed below) that could allow anyone to bypass the security control put in place by Microsoft and create self-replicating malware hidden behind innocent-looking MS Word documents. What's Worse? Microsoft refused to consider this issue a security loophole when contacted by the researcher in October this year, saying it's a feature intended to work this way only—just like MS Offic

A new widespread ransomware worm, known as " Bad Rabbit ," that hit over 200 major organisations, primarily in Russia and Ukraine this week leverages a stolen NSA exploit released by the Shadow Brokers this April to spread across victims' networks. Earlier it was reported that this week's crypto-ransomware outbreak did not use any National Security Agency-developed exploits, neither EternalRomance nor EternalBlue , but a recent report from Cisco's Talos Security Intelligence revealed that the Bad Rabbit ransomware did use EternalRomance exploit. NotPetya ransomware (also known as ExPetr and Nyetya) that infected tens of thousands of systems back in June also leveraged the EternalRomance exploit , along with another NSA's leaked Windows hacking exploit EternalBlue, which was used in the WannaCry ransomware outbreak. Bad Rabbit Uses EternalRomance SMB RCE Exploit Bad Rabbit does not use EternalBlue but does leverage EternalRomance RCE exploit to spread

A new widespread ransomware attack is spreading like wildfire around Europe and has already affected over 200 major organisations, primarily in Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and Germany, in the past few hours. Dubbed " Bad Rabbit ," is reportedly a new Petya-like targeted ransomware attack against corporate networks, demanding 0.05 bitcoin (~ $285) as ransom from victims to unlock their systems. According to an initial analysis provided by the Kaspersky, the ransomware was distributed via drive-by download attacks, using fake Adobe Flash players installer to lure victims' in to install malware unwittingly. "No exploits were used, so the victim would have to manually execute the malware dropper, which pretends to be an Adobe Flash installer. We've detected a number of compromised websites, all of which were news or media websites." Kaspersky Lab said . However, security researchers at ESET have detected Bad Rabbit malware as ' Win32/Diskcoder.D ' —

We don't really know the pain and cost of a downtime event unless we are directly touched. Be it a flood, electrical failure, ransomware attack or other broad geographic events; we don't know what it is really like to have to restore IT infrastructure unless we have had to do it ourselves. We look at other people's backup and recovery issues and hope we are smarter or clever enough to keep it from happening to us. Recovery from a downtime event includes inconvenience, extra work, embarrassment and yes, real pain. A ransomware attack is a good example. Unitrends—an American company specialised in backup and business continuity solutions—recently shared with us a real cyber-attack incident happened with one of their customers to describe the required steps they took to recover functionality following a CryptoLocker attack against a US city. Also, how it cost city's Governance team days of production and hundreds of man-hours to recover. The Challenge

Remember NotPetya ? The Ransomware that shut down thousands of businesses, organisations and banks in Ukraine as well as different parts of Europe in June this year. Now, Ukrainian government authorities are once again warning its citizens to brace themselves for next wave of "large-scale" NotPetya-like cyber attack. According to a press release published Thursday by the Secret Service of Ukraine (SBU), the next major cyber attack could take place between October 13 and 17 when Ukraine celebrates Defender of Ukraine Day (in Ukrainian: День захисника України, Den' zakhysnyka Ukrayiny). Authorities warn the cyber attack can once again be conducted through a malicious software update against state government institutions and private companies. The attackers of the NotPetya ransomware also used the same tactic—compromising the update mechanism for Ukrainian financial software provider called MeDoc and swapping in a dodgy update including the NotPetya computer v

DoubleLocker —as the name suggests, it locks device twice. Security researchers from Slovakia-based security software maker ESET have discovered a new Android ransomware that not just encrypts users' data, but also locks them out of their devices by changing lock screen PIN. On top of that: DoubleLocker is the first-ever ransomware to misuse Android accessibility —a feature that provides users alternative ways to interact with their smartphone devices, and mainly misused by Android banking Trojans to steal banking credentials. "Given its banking malware roots, DoubleLocker may well be turned into what could be called ransom-bankers," said Lukáš Štefanko, the malware researcher at ESET. "Two-stage malware that first tries to wipe your bank or PayPal account and subsequently locks your device and data to request a ransom." Researchers believe DoubleLocker ransomware could be upgraded in future to steal banking credentials as well, other than just ext

Whenever we feel like the Locky ransomware is dead, the notorious threat returns with a bang . Recently, researchers from two security firms have independently spotted two mass email campaigns, spreading two different, but new variants of the Locky ransomware . Lukitus Campaign Sends 23 Million Emails in 24 Hours The campaign spotted by researchers at AppRiver sent out more than 23 million messages containing Locky ransomware in just 24 hours on 28 August across the United States in what appears to be one of the largest malware campaigns in the second half of this year. According to the researchers, the emails sent out in the attack were "extremely vague," with subjects lines such as "please print," "documents," "images," "photos," "pictures," and "scans" in an attempt to convince victims into infecting themselves with Locky ransomware. The email comes with a ZIP attachment (hiding the malware payload) tha

"Ransomware" threat is on the rise, and cyber criminals are making millions of dollars by victimizing as many people as they can—with WannaCry , NotPetya and LeakerLocker being the ransomware threats that made headlines recently. What's BAD? Hacker even started selling ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) kits in an attempt to spread this creepy threat more easily, so that even a non-tech user can create their own ransomware and distribute the threat to a wider audience. The WORSE —You could see a massive increase in the number of ransomware campaigns during the next several months—thanks to new Android apps available for anyone to download that let them quickly and easily create Android ransomware with their own devices. Security researchers at Antivirus firm Symantec have spotted some Android apps available on hacking forums and through advertisements on a social networking messaging service popular in China, which let any wannabe hacker download and use Trojan

One of the most devastating aspects of the recent WannaCry ransomware attack was its self-propagating capability exploiting a vulnerability in the file access protocol, SMB v1. Most enterprises defences are externally-facing, focused on stopping incoming email and web attacks. But, once attackers gain a foothold inside the network through malware, there are very few security controls that would prevent the spread of the attack between enterprise locations in the Wide Area Network (WAN). This is partly due to the way enterprises deploy security tools, such as IPS appliances, and the effort needed to maintain those tools across multiple locations. It's for those reasons Cato Networks recently introduced a context-aware Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) as part of its secure SD-WAN service . There are several highlights in this announcement that challenge the basic concept of how IT security maintains an IPS device and sustains the effectiveness of its protection. Cato Network

Ukrainian authorities have arrested a 51-year-old man accused of distributing the infamous Petya ransomware (Petya.A, also known as NotPetya) — the same computer virus that massively hit numerous businesses, organisations and banks in Ukraine as well as different parts of Europe around 45 days ago. However, the story is not as simple as it seems, which portrayed this man as a criminal. I recommend you to read complete article to understand the case better and then have an opinion accordingly. Sergey Neverov (Сергей Неверов), father of two sons and the resident of the southern city of Nikopol, is a video blogger and computer enthusiast who was arrested by the Ukrainian police on Monday, August 7 from his home. What Neverov Did? According to a press release published on Thursday by the Ukrainian cyber police department, Neverov uploaded a video, showing how to infect a computer with Petya.A ransomware—and also shared a download link for NotPetya malware to his social media