Born's Tech and Windows World

[German]Strange things are happening at the moment. The threat actor behind the lesser-known AstraLocker ransomware seems to want to stop its activities. The actor plans to switch to cryptojacking and has published an archive of AstraLocker decryption programs. I'll try to summarize the facts I know, although much is unclear, even though the actor has probably also contacted my English-language blog.

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[German]US media report that a hacker is currently trying to sell a 23 terabyte data set for the price of 10 bitcoins (around 195,000 euros). The dataset is said to contain 1 billion personal data of the population from a police database of the Chinese city of Shanghai.

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[German]Security researchers from ReversingLabs have tracked down a relatively unknown malware, which they have named AstraLocker. In version 2.0, the attackers have taken to loading the malicious payload directly from a Word document that is included as an attachment to a mail. This is unusual in that cyber attackers usually try to disguise the attack. Security researchers believe the group has limited cyber-attack capabilities, but gears its campaigns toward destruction.

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