A threat from the past has been reawakened as the CryptoLocker virus has resurfaced. In a blog post, Bitdefender claims that the malware has infected more than 10,000 people in a week.
CryptoLocker is a Trojan virus that "steals" files from victims' computers and demands a ransom of $300 to "return" them.
If the user does not give in, CryptoLocker threatens the victim that it will delete the encryption key, rendering the files unreadable.
Bitdefender researchers were able to reverse engineer the CryptoLocker domain algorithm, discovering 12,016 visits between October 27 and November 1.
They also found that the infected users were exclusively from the US. The algorithms of similar malicious applications generate commands to new subdomains on a daily basis, to avoid being suspended by the authorities.
CryptoLocker's servers do not stay online for more than a week and constantly change location.
Bitdefender emphasized that during its team's investigations, the servers detected were located in Russia, Germany, Kazakhstan , and Ukraine.
Source: e-pcmag.gr
