While I wish I could tell you that today's post is a Halloween joke, that simply is not the truth. The cyber world is frequently an unsafe place, and this is another instance of that...
Here is an interesting story that, at least at this point, does not have a large number of victims, but is fascinating in its deployment.
As many in the tech world know, Putin and the Russian security services have tremendous reach in the cyber realm. There are instances such as the 2016 US election interference, data crashing worms, the takedown of the IT systems of the Seoul Olympics, and multiple attacks on the Ukrainian power grid prior to the 2022 invasion.
Now comes an attack that attempts to blame/frame security researchers and a computer website for a new destructive program. Called Azov, it masquerades as RansomWare, when in fact its sole purpose is to totally encrypt hard drives with no way to decrypt.
It leaves a ransom note that reads:
When the victim reads this ransom note, they see a list of potential criminal partners near the top. All of those listed have denied an knowledge or involvement with this situation. Also, if you read the entire note it seems to be pointing to a pro-Russia approach to the invasion of Ukraine.
If possible, do not allow Azov onto your systems and if you are one of the unfortunate individuals affected by this, hopefully you have reliable backups as there is NO decryption key.
For the full story, you can follow this link to bleepingcomputer.com.
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