Recorded Future, a threat intelligence company has recently discovered that ransomware is nowadays available as a service for just $175. Diana Granger and Andrei Barysevich- researchers from Recorded Future have found that a dark web forum from Russia is selling a ransomware called Karmen for a cheap price.
The said malware which requires very little technical skill to deploy has the ability to destroy the decryptor if a sandbox environment or analysis software is detected on the victim’s computer. The developer of this malware also claims that Karmen displays a pop-up message as soon as it infects the system and displays a warning to the victim saying them not to interfere with the malware in any form.
Technically speaking, Karmen malware is derived from “Hidden Tear” which is an open source ransomware project. The seller who is also a developer with the name DevBitox said that he is only involved in web development and control panel design of the malware and has so far succeeded in selling 20 copies of malware to potential buyers and has so far victimized around 2500 victims in Germany and United States.
Karmen encrypts files on the infected machine using the strong AES 256 protocol and keeps it inaccessible to users until a heavy ransom is paid to the developer.
And the only way to remain isolated from such dreaded ransomware is to keep a backup of all the data being generated in the production environment in the right way. So, when the malware strikes, you can use the backed up data until a cleanup of the infected data is performed.
Is it not a smart move to deal with the situation…?
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