Ransomware infections reported worldwide

a reply to: mirageman

white hat hackers, black hat hackers, grey hat hackers, all dung, all dog dung, all lost souls ;-(

a reply to: ArMaP
Really?, I thought most computer users know at least a little about Bitcoin

a reply to: CthulhuMythos

Most computer users use computers at work and are limited to a few actions that they do every day.

For example, in the company that had some of its computers infected with this ransomware, only two or three people out of 10 know of "electronic currency", but they do not know how it works.

a reply to: ArMaP

Don't most people have computers at home too?

a reply to: CthulhuMythos

They have, and use them mostly for Facebook or they are used by their kids.

a reply to: ArMaP

yeah, you are probably right there, most people with pc's at home just use them for communications (and gaming maybe) but possibly not acquiring news (real news not the crap that is spoon fed from the TV).

This Ransomware attack became known as WannaCry because it was the source code used.

A guy in Briton, MalwareTech, found a "kill switch" in the code and the threat was stopped.

MalwareTech is 23 year old, Marcus Hutchins. He has been arrested in Las Vegas, NV on unknown charges and being held at an unknown location by the FBI.

The British cyber-security researcher who was praised for stalling the worldwide WannaCry cyber-attack has been arrested in Las Vegas.

BBC.com - NHS cyber-security hero Marcus Hutchins arrested in US.

This story is breaking. Not much details behind the headline.

Ars Technica - Slayer of WCry worm detained after attending Defcon.

With a subtitle: Friends and family haven't heard from Marcus Hutchins in almost 24 hours.

More information on the sequence of events. He went to Las Vegas to attend DEFCON. He made it to the airport. He never arrived in England. He stopped tweeting too.

a reply to: Misterlondon

But these people suffering this have nothing to hide!

We have nothing to hide!

Terrorists only, we are not them!

Oh well, I guess the NSA was wrong and now hurts us very effectively.

Makes you just want to hug your big brother.

Thanks!

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

Tuesday August 1st the value of an encrypted bitcoin dropped 10% from 2914 to 2647.
Of course its recovered some since then.

a reply to: Cauliflower

There also been some movement of bitcoins from the wallets of some of those that paid the ransom.

But of course the three are unrelated (split, bitcoin movement, FBI arrest)!!

Art Technica - WannaCry operator empties Bitcoin wallets connected to ransomware.

Makes one wonder what is going on??

Marcus Hutchins... a citizen and resident of the United Kingdom, was arrested in the United States on 2 August, 2017, in Las Vegas, Nevada, after a grand jury in the Eastern District of Wisconsin returned a six-count indictment against Hutchins for his role in creating and distributing the Kronos banking Trojan," the US Department of Justice (DOJ) said in a statement.

"The charges against Hutchins, and for which he was arrested, relate to alleged conduct that occurred between in or around July 2014 and July 2015."

Kronos is malware that is designed to steal banking login and other financial data from infected computers.

BBC.com - NHS cyber-defender Marcus Hutchins arrested in US.

Huh? You would think that some dastardly, hacker, would be smart enough to not attend a well known event in Las Vegas. Let alone if you are the cyber security rock star that halted a world wide ransomware attack.

Let's see. Kronos popped up 2014 which would put him at 20. Then it popped up again last year after the WannaCry outbreak. The timing doesn't look quite right.

Kronos came from Russian forums. Steals info, keystroke recorder, own email engine, changes registry entries, and is after your banking info. That is an awful lot of stuff for a couple of dudes to cook up. Especially when the British tabloids are following your every move.

Wonder what is really happening?

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

I don't pretend to know anything about this.
All I know is they said Microsoft wanted us to install security update KB4012212.
#401 was found on the starboard propeller of the Titanic so I'm not getting all warm and fuzzy feelings about this update.
Years ago you could use a decompiler to figure out what an object actually did and even modify it.

I read that at this years defcon they were demonstrating some advanced reverse engineering tools that could be operated remotely.
Presumably the victim would still have to be fooled into clicking through an run allow but still..

a reply to: Cauliflower

There are tools out there that I would probably swear to never got on the internet again if I knew what they could do.

I used to like knowing what code did on my machine. Then I wrecked my registry so my curiosity kind of died there.

As far as his hacking goes seems we have two options:

1 - Believe he created Kronos and is "bad guy" hacker
2 - Believe the FBI

I don't like either option! My mind "knows" which one is most likely but my tinfoil hat also tingles!

I think I will drop the whole thing and go back to watching Mr. Robot where I know the hacking is "real" (they have technical staff actually working out how a hack would be conducted) but I can turn the tv off at the end of the day!

Another expert in computer crime, Orin Kerr from George Washington University law school, also took aim at the charges. Kerr said it's unusual, and problematic, for prosecutors to go after someone simply for writing or selling malware—as opposed to using it to further a crime.

"The indictment is pretty bare bones, and we don't have all the facts or even what the government thinks are the facts," Kerr wrote in an opinion piece in the Washington Post. "So while we can't say that this indictment is clearly an overreach, we can say that the government is pushing the envelope in some ways and may or may not have the facts it needs to make its case."

phys.org - Computer law expert says British hacker arrest problematic.

They also say that if selling code that leads to malware is a crime then half the code producers in the US are felons! All I can think of is the bloat size of MS Word as it goes through iterations. Why should one version save a file as 3K in an early version and the next version it 6- or 7K??

The "incentive" is also used in the article. As in, "dis-incentive" for software security companies to actually do work. That puts everybody at risk. Keeps the NSA in the game but puts everybody at risk. That is what I think the real issue here is that the identity of the true author of software is at stake and cowering behind the skirt of the FBI some grandiose charges have been leveled to shut the guy up.

But that could just be the coffee and the tinfoil hat talking.