David Balaban
Articles by David Balaban
The RSA-4096 Virus to Encourage Backups, yet Requires Data Recovery and Removal Efforts
There are many good reasons for making backups outside your computer memory. RSA-4096 ransomware is one of the best reasons. The name refers to a piece of ransomware that deploys encryption attack. The attack renders data into unreadable state using enhanced scrambling system. There is no likely way to decrypt the affected files without releasing the decryption key, the latter being stored at the remote hacker's server. Victims of the attack who stick to regular backups would restore access to their data in a breeze. They only need to remove the RSA-4096 virus, including any remnants thereof and restore the data from backups. Other unhappy cases imply more complex routines, yet cannot ensure adequate restoration of the encoded items. The infection vectors circulating the infection may vary. In fact, there are many groups and individual hackers spreading the plague. They get it from the developer, which is not likely to distribute the malware directly to the victims' computers. Some investigations completed by IT security enthusiasts reveal several underground communities of cyber criminals sharing the viral code. It is not quite clear if there is a single owner exercising control over the ransomware releases. However, there are definitely some guidelines issued that instruct RSA-4096 ransomware distributor on the best way to drop and adjust the virus. They recommend setting a ransom amount neither high nor low, circa one bitcoin. The distributors are also advised to leverage social engineering tricks luring the victims to basically install the ransomware with their own hands. Once landed on a target PC, the virus may linger for a while. The delay is meant to make things obfuscated so that the users would not associate the ransomware with the just-completed installation. The lingering is followed by the scan which actually omits critical system files and extremely rare extensions. The items so detected undergo complex scrambling routine, which cannot be resolved with reverse engineering and any complex technological workarounds. The procedures and tools available below represent, to the best of our knowledge and believe, the best practice of RSA-4096 ransomware extermination and the affected data handling. Again, prevention is the best cure. Everyone is encouraged to stick to regular off-line backups.
What Do You Know About Rooting and Jailbreaking?
Smart phones are excellent out of the box, but if you are a tech expert or enthusiast, you will probably find the customization of your smart phone slightly underwhelming. Having the ability to modify your wall-paper and ringtone and whether or not Siri has an Australian accent merely goes thus far when considering tapping into your phone's hardware possibilities. Due to this fact, a lot of people have considered getting rid of some restrictions; that is known as jailbreaking for the iPhone and rooting for the Android phones. Although jailbreaking and rooting are different from a technical perspective, they achieve identical aims. They provide you with privileged access to the device, enabling you to do stuff you would not typically have the ability to. Let's begin with Apple. iOS by default stops any applications that have not been authorized by Apple and placed into the App Store. It also pushes you to use Apple's default user interface. Even more, Apple hides its file system from users. And not only it is hard to find} your files it additionally restrains you from utilizing the free space as a convenient USB flash drive. Should you jailbreak your iPhone, these restrictions are taken away giving you the ability to personalize the look of your user interface, install and use any app created for iOS. No Apple authorization required in this instance. You are able directly to reach the file system, and use your phone as a flash drive. A large community has emerged around the technique of jailbreaking. You can discover plenty of jailbreak-exclusive apps for your iPhone. What about Android? The Android equivalent to jailbreaking is rooting, which as well, provides a great number of graphic and functionality alterations. Other sorts of improved abilities are app automation, the power to transform your phone into a no cost wi-fi hotspot, no matter if your carrier allows it, and even overclocking. In fact, quite a number of people do it on the Android for far less unusual purposes. They desire to remove the frustrating, hard to eradicate bad software that comes preinstalled on numerous Android gadgets. Are you ready to give it a try? Jailbreaking and rooting your phone usually isn't complicated. A simple web search will give a whole lot of downloadable tools that you may employ to facilitate advanced access rights on your gadget. Remember that because these types of products are actual exploits that benefit from security weak points in the operating system, jailbreaking and rooting are probably not available when you have a brand new device or the latest version of iOS or Android. A lot of phone manufacturing companies work continually to stop these techniques and often issue software patches. So, we mentioned exploits. There are a lot of dangers involved. Jailbreaking and rooting do include a few caveats. Altering your phone like that will void your warranty and in case you do it incorrectly it may possibly break your gadget. Plenty of users also ask themselves if jailbreaking or rooting is legal. Jailbreaking even has the word jail right in it. The right answer varies according to you your location and the time that you dwell in. The quick answer for anybody residing Canada and the U.S. living in the now is yes, it's legal provided that you are not doing it to infringe on a copyright. Keep in mind; that legislation may change quite often. It's preferable to do some digging around prior to deciding to} trick out your phone.
What Everybody Ought to Know About DDoS Attacks
Have you ever been browsing your favorite website or watching your favorite online video stream only to have your access suddenly slowed to a crawl or cut off? We're not talking about a frustrated parent, spouse, child or pet yanking the cord. Then you realize that every other site is working fine. Well, your initial response might be: "Those guys need to upgrade their network connection and servers," which may actually be the case. However, another likely scenario is that the site is undergoing a Distributed Denial of Service, or DDoS attack. These nuisances come in many forms: amplification attacks, nukes, teardrops, smurfs, etc., but most operate in pretty much the same manner. By utilizing a large network of remote PCs called a botnet, the attackers overwhelm another system's connection or processing capacity, thus causing it to deny service to the legitimate traffic it's receiving. The computer security community is more accustomed to DDoS attacks against big businesses rather than startups. There have been incidents where the entire infrastructures of multinational corporations went down because of targeted, well-orchestrated server bombarding with automatically generated requests. And yet, the trend of black hat cyber actors hitting ambitious players on the startup arena is on the rise. The offenders' motivation is twofold. In most cases, it's all about unhealthy competition in a particular niche. Some ill-disposed individuals may hire an army of zombie machines on the black market in order to flood their rivals with the amount of traffic that their servers can't handle. When pulling off these attacks, the adversary obviously wants to call forth customer churn due to reputational issues and the competitors' inability to operate properly. There is also an extortion facet of the matter. Scammers and ransomware authors may DDoS the web services of startups in a bid to make them pay for the cessation of the onslaught. In other words, the affected parties have to submit a certain amount of money to get their business up and running again. The first type of attack could be considered the standard Blitzkrieg type because it attempts to directly overwhelm a system, often by plugging all of its ports with garbage streams like incessant pings, or endlessly fragmented packets without rebuilding instructions. It's pretty much the equivalent of a kid in the backseat asking, "Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?" - leaving absolutely no dead air to actually respond and say, "For the last time no, we're not there yet." Next up are attacks that cause further bandwidth and processing congestion by forcing the server to actually respond to their nonsense. Cybercrooks can do it in a number of ways: by forcing a website to handshake endlessly with new systems or attempt to validate spam port connection requests before eventually giving out an ICMP destination error. Another instance is GET request attacks triggering this sort of large-scale file transfers that only happen naturally when Taylor Swift releases a new single on iTunes. The third type of attack, the most deadly move in the DDoS arsenal, is the DNS server amplification attack. This technique uses an individual PC's ability to act as its own domain name server to request the same sort of junk from the other DNS servers, then forward it to a target, amplifying the severity of the attack as much as seventy fold. This technique has apparently allowed ne'er-do-wells to attack on the scale of four hundred gigabits per second recently. That's fifty times more than in the largest previously recorded attack ten years ago at eight gigabits per second. But why would anyone set their mind on doing this? Good question. And there's a wide range of motivations, from hacktivist groups trying to block access to terrorist recruitment websites, to gamers targeting opponents to increase their ping times for a competitive edge, to folks who apparently just want to watch the world burn. That's beside the aforementioned mercantile motivations of cyber-extortionists and unethical competitors. But the good news is protection against these sorts of attacks is getting easier and more affordable than ever with techniques like running data through a high-capacity server or using scrubbing filters that prevent huge amounts of fake traffic from causing more than just a momentary slowdown. Another applicable countermeasure is what's called the out-of-band connection. Essentially, this is a backup connection that you can use in case the main network goes down. Just request one from your hosting provider and rest assured that your service remains accessible even in the worst-case scenario. An early warning system is a complementary component that notifies the administrator if an unnatural spike of incoming traffic is encountered. It's also a good idea to use a content delivery network (CDN) for the most frequently visited pages. This will decrease the page load time and reduce the adverse effect of a possible DDoS attack.
History and Evolution of TeslaCrypt Ransomware Virus
TeslaCrypt is a file-encrypting ransomware program intended for all Windows versions including Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 7 and Windows 8. This program was released for the first time towards the end of February 2015. Once it infects your computer, TeslaCrypt will search for data files and encrypt them with AES encryption such that you will no longer be able to open them. As soon as all the data files on your computer have been infected, an application will be displayed that provides details on how to retrieve your files. There is a link in the instructions that connects you to a TOR Decryption Service site. This site will give you details of the current ransom amount, the number of files that have been encrypted and how you can make payment so that your files are released. The ransom amount usually starts at $500. It is payable through Bitcoins. There is a different Bitcoin address for each victim. Once TeslaCrypt is installed on your computer, it generates a randomly labeled executable in the %AppData% folder. The executable is launched and begins to scan your computer's drive letters for files to encrypt. When it detects a supported data file, it encrypts it and attaches a new extension to the name of the file. This name is based on the variant that has affected your computer. With the release of new variants of TeslaCrypt, the program uses different file extensions for the encrypted files. Currently, TeslaCrypt uses the following extensions: .ccc, .abc, .aaa, .zzz, .xyz, .exx, .ezz and .ecc. There is a possibility that you could use the TeslaDecoder tool to decrypt your encrypted files free of charge. It, of course, depends on the version of TeslaCrypt that's infected your files. You should note that TeslaCrypt will scan all of the drive letters on your computer to find files to encrypt. It includes network shares, DropBox mappings, and removable drives. However, it only targets data files on network shares if you have the network share mapped as a drive letter on your computer. If you haven't mapped the network share as a drive letter, the ransomware will not encrypt the files on that network share. Once it is done scanning your computer, it will erase all Shadow Volume Copies. The ransomware does this to prevent you from restoring the affected files. The application title displayed after encryption of your computer indicates the ransomware's version. How your computer gets infected with TeslaCrypt TeslaCrypt infects computers when the user visits a hacked website that runs an exploit kit and whose computer has outdated programs. Developers hack websites to distribute this malware. They install a unique software program known as an exploit kit. This kit seeks to take an advantage of vulnerabilities found in your computer's programs. Some of the programs whose vulnerabilities are usually exploited include Windows, Acrobat Reader, Adobe Flash and Java. Once the exploit kit succeeds in exploiting the vulnerabilities on your computer, it automatically installs and launches TeslaCrypt without your knowledge. You should, therefore, ensure that you Windows and other installed programs are up-to-date. It will protect you from potential vulnerabilities that could lead to infection of your computer with TeslaCrypt. This ransom ware was the first of its kind to target data files utilized by PC video games actively. It targets game files for games such as MineCraft, Steam, World of Tanks, League of Legends, Half-life 2. Diablo, Fallout 3, Skyrim, Dragon Age, Call of Duty, RPG Maker, and many others. It has, however, not been ascertained whether game targets mean increased revenue for developers of this malware. Versions of TeslaCrypt and associated file extensions TeslaCrypt is updated regularly to incorporate new file extensions and encryption techniques. The first version encrypts files with the extension .ecc. The encrypted files, in this case, are not paired with the data files. The TeslaDecoder too can be used to recover the original decryption key. It is possible if the decryption key was zeroed out and partial key found in key.dat. The decryption key can also be found the Tesla request sent to the server. There is another version with encrypted file extensions of .ecc and .ezz. One cannot recover the original decryption key without the ransomware's authors' private key if the decryption was zeroed out. The encrypted files are also not paired with the data file. Decryption key can be git from the Tesla request sent to the server. For the version with extension file name .ezz and .exx, the original decryption key cannot be recovered without the authors' private key, if the decryption key was zeroed out. Encrypted files with the extension .exx are paired with data files. Decryption key can also be got from the Tesla request to the server. The version with encrypted file extensions .ccc, .abc, .aaa, .zzz and .xyz does not use data files and the decryption key is not stored on your computer. It can only be decrypted in the event the victim captured the key as it was being sent to the server. Decryption key can be retrieved from Tesla request to the server. It is not possible to do this for versions after TeslaCrypt v2.1.0. Release of TeslaCrypt 4.0 Recently, the authors released TeslaCrypt 4.0 sometime in March 2016. A brief analysis shows that the new version corrects a bug that previously corrupted files bigger than 4GB. It also has new ransom notes and does not use an extension for encrypted files. The absence of an extension makes it hard for users to discover about TeslaCryot and what happened to their files. With the new version, victims will have to follow paths developed through the ransom notes. There are little established ways to decrypt files with no extension without a purchased decryption key or Tesla's private key. The files can be decrypted if the victim captured the key as it was being sent to the server during encryption.
Awful Things You Need to Know About Rootkits
For as long as cyber criminals have been cooking up malicious software to do stuff like stealing your precious data, the security industry has been thinking up creative names for their little schemes. Trojans, worms, ransomware, adware; you get the idea. One of the most sinister forms of malware prevalent today is the dreaded rootkit, and a little to the layman, this sounds like some kind of dental procedure. An actual rootkit on your PC can be far more unpleasant. But what exactly are they? Why are they more dangerous than other types of computer infections? Great questions. Like with the other threats to your system, the name rootkit reveals a lot. It's derived from the concept of root access in the operating system UNIX which allows a user broad permissions to change files and settings. And while the means by which different rootkits access to usually off-limits parts of the computer differ, all rootkits serve the same general function: to conceal either their own or another piece of malware presence. Rootkits desire to carry out their nefarious deeds on your system without you ever knowing. And it's because of this concealed behavior that rootkits are often very difficult to remove. And many users in the mid-2000s found out that when they realized Sony had shipped music CDs with rootkits designed for, you guessed it, copy protection. These rootkits hid the DRM software which limited what users could do with their optical drives and also caused serious system slowdowns and introduced a ton of security flaws that other malware authors used in their attacks. And then when Sony finally released a removal toolб after news of the rootkit went viral, all it did was cause even more issues. So how do rootkits hide themselves? While some rootkits just inject themselves into your programs, somewhat like traditional computer viruses, more dangerous forms run as part of your operating system's kernel. Kernel is the core part of your OS that allows your programs to communicate with your hardware through things like device drivers. Since drivers usually run in kernel mode, many rootkits disguise themselves as drivers, which is why you should only download drivers from trusted sources like the manufacturer's websites, regardless of how desperately you want to get your fancy new graphics card working. What makes kernel mode rootkits so insidious is that they essentially appear to be a part of the OS itself, meaning you can't really trust your antivirus program to detect it, or anything else your system says about itself in that case. If that weren't awful enough, other kinds of rootkits even go beyond infecting your OS kernel. They do things like contaminating your hard drive's boot sector in order to break the encryption, or getting into your system's firmware such as your motherboard or GPU BIOS. If that happens, not even completely reformatting your PC will help. Well, that all sounds pretty darn horrible. If I don't really know I have rootkits, how do I get rid of them? That, admittedly, is a challenge. Larger organizations have tried strategies like logging suspicious access requests through a firewall or dumping everything in a system's memory to look for malicious code. However, these aren't the sorts of things a home user can easily do. Modern motherboards with UEFI BIOS have some features to block rootkits, such as secure boot, but this solution has been criticized for keeping a user from doing legitimate things like installing multiple operating systems. So while some simpler rootkits can be detected and removed by your favorite anti-malware program, the best counter strategy is to just be super careful about what you click and download.