Can someone explain ransomware?

Fritz Maurer

Well-known Member
I know basically what it is, but I don't get how the ransom gets paid with out the perpetrator getting busted. The money has to be wired somewhere, right? How can one have a completely anonymous web address or bank account?
 
The standard method is via nnalert, which is an electronic currency. The victim buys Bitcoins with their credit card, then transfers the Bitcoins to the perpetrator.

nnalert payments are difficult but not impossible to track. So it works fine for small-time operators, but whoever perpetrated the recent large-scale attack now finds himself in the awkward position of having thousands of dollars worth of Bitcoins he can't cash in because every law enforcement agency in the world is looking for them. Sort of like collecting ransom with cash where all the serial numbers have been recorded.
 
Usually these accounts are outside the US and our authorities have no jurisdiction. These are also small $ amounts, which means there is virtually zero chance of any backlash coming from the USA. Add to that how bank accounts in some countries are now opened sometimes for less than a day and then closed, and....well, now you can start to see the hassle of trying to catch these idiots. Best thing to do is to protect your PC, and ALWAYS make regular backups!! There is no one software that can protect you completely, either. I have a Norton paid subscription, but a friend of mine was saying how he has a VPN set up, so that "if" he should ever get any bad software, he can simply wipe it away as though it were never there.

Avast Anti-virus offers a VPN, but you can also make your own by choosing to learn a version of Linux similar to the version of Windows you're currently using. These can be made to boot off of a flash drive, and run 100% independent of your original operating system. That means you can keep your standard OS and software intact, but use the Linux OS for surfing, etc., without fear of getting bad software.
 

A few years ago - when the virus tended to be delivered by email (these days, it is just as likely to be a booby-trapped webpage or a direct network infection) - a client of mine got hit. They found out that their backup system had jumped the tracks a few weeks before - and they lost a couple hundred thousand files on the server. It looks for any data like Word documents, Excel files, pictures, QuickBooks files, etc, etc...

We scrambled to buy some nnalert before the ransom deadline hit - and got their website paid just in time. The website was located in Kazakhstan and with the ~$600 in nnalert we made an anonymous digital-wallet to digital-wallet direct transfer. A couple of minutes later (while we waited anxiously wondering if we had just wasted our money) a page on the ransom website opened and let us download a tiny little file (the "cure" program) and the key - which was about a page and a half long "password" specific to our data kidnapping.

The download happened so fast I thought they had scammed us at first, but it was a real cure. It took 3 PCs cranking for almost a week to retrieve all the data, but we got close to 100% of it back.

The ironic thing is/was - with the recent rise of value in nnalert - and the fact that we over-bought for the ransom itself and then hung onto it just for fun - means we have close to $1,500 worth of extra nnalert now...


This article gives a rough outline of why anonymous digital currency has gone hand-in-hand with the ransomware threat over the past few years:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/15/digital-gold-why-hackers-love-nnalert-ransomware


It is a big threat and seems to be worse now than when we first ran into it 4-5 years ago. It is nothing to mess with - if you get hit, the options are 1) go to your backups, 2) pay the ransom and hope for the best, or 3) start retyping everything... :(





Howard
 
good reason to back everything up on an external hard drive, just do not do like a friend of mine and leave the drive connected to the computer. I have files backed up on dvd, flash drive and two external hard drives.
 
The good news for now, is that in order for the whole scam to work, they have to release your files if you pay. If they do not, no one else will ever pay, and the whole thing goes to heck. That is, if no one ever cooks the golden goose...
 

Latest reports indicate that big kerfluffle a week or so back was produced by North Korea using programs stolen form our own NSA. Seriously, the whole power grid could be brought down in nothing flat. We are way, way, way to dependent on computer systems to keep things running. If they can use this for ransomeware, they also use it to seize the system and just shut it down permanently.
 
Very similar subject. I totally fail to understand how truly anonymous transfers can take place.

Ignoring the ransomware, when your Nigerian Prince withdraws money from the account number you foolishly gave him, why on earth can the bank not track that and recover the funds? If I withdrew it from a friend's account you can bet they will find me and get it back. It just seems that an electronic trail would be the norm instead of something you have to create.

I know I'm naive about this stuff.
 
The procedural crime dramas you watch on TV are complete fiction. Very rarely does a case get that kind of attention in the real world. Most, especially cases like this where the perpetrator is a virtual phantom operating from a foreign nation committing a non-violent crime, the police just take reports and file them for statistics. They know there's no hope of ever catching these guys, and besides, it would cost millions of taxpayer dollars to bring these people to justice over the theft of a few hundred dollars. Catch one, and another one will just pop up to take his place.
 
(quoted from post at 09:39:34 05/25/17) The procedural crime dramas you watch on TV are complete fiction. Very rarely does a case get that kind of attention in the real world. Most, especially cases like this where the perpetrator is a virtual phantom operating from a foreign nation committing a non-violent crime, the police just take reports and file them for statistics. They know there's no hope of ever catching these guys, and besides, it would cost millions of taxpayer dollars to bring these people to justice over the theft of a few hundred dollars. Catch one, and another one will just pop up to take his place.

Very true. Once a crime crosses a state line, to say nothing of a national boundary or an ocean, things get real complex real fast. Some nations simply won't cooperate with LE in the US at all. What you see on NCIS, Law and Order or CSI is complete horse feathers.
 

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