Extortion Virus Code Cracked

Billosaur writes "BBC News is reporting that the password to the dreaded Archiveus virus has been discovered and is now available to anyone who needs it. Archiveus is a 'ransomware' virus, which combines files from the My Documents folder on Windows machines and exchanges them for a single, password-protected file, which it will not unlock unless a password is given. The user would normally be required to pay the extortionist money in order to receive the password, but apparently the virus writer made one small, critical error in coding: placing the password in the code. BTW, the 30-digit password locking the files is mf2lro8sw03ufvnsq034jfowr18f3cszc20vmw."

What relief!

BTW, the 30-digit password locking the files is mf2lro8sw03ufvnsq034jfowr18f3cszc20vmw."

I was just looking for that. Thanks!

Re:What relief!

> > BTW, the 30-digit password locking the files is mf2lro8sw03ufvnsq034jfowr18f3cszc20vmw."
>
> I was just looking for that. Thanks!

What?! That's exactly the kind of combination a Slashdotter would use on his luggage!

ummm

Odd how that "30 digit password" has 38 characters, 13 of which are digits.

Re:ummm

Maybe they meant 30 as in "any number that is greater than 29 and less than 40". You know, thirty. Thirty-ish. Mostly thirty. About thirty. Close to forty, but not quite. Good enough for government work. In Soviet Russia, YOU are 30. 30) Profit! 38 is the new 30.

Actually I didn't see any fingers or toes in the password at all.

Re:ummm

No, no. You have to pay the virus researchers to find out which eight characters to ignore. Thank god for the virus researchers, otherwise the virus ransomers would really have us, huh?

Base 13 Jokes

Douglas Adams made one....

"What do you get when you multiply six by nine?" "Forty-two".

Work it out in base 13.

Wait...

We are all now victims of a DMCA lawsuit!

My Lord what are we coming to

These days even the virus authors don't know anything about writing secure software :(

Just wait...

Next time it will be a virus writer who knows about public key cryptography, and then you'll just have to pony up the dough... (or you could stop getting your computer infected with malware in the first place.)

Re:Just wait...

>(or you could stop getting your computer infected with malware in the first place.)

Backing up your data would also work.

Notice how much this virus is like a proprietary file format? You can't get at your own data without paying for a license to the proprietary reader.

Wrong

You're wrong. You can cypher it with the public key and it can't be recovered without the private key, which is safe at his computer.

Re:Just wait...

Public key cryptography does not work against a man in the middle attack.

True, in general, though precautions can be taken. I fail to see how a MITM attack is even relevant here, though.

When the files are being encrypted by software running on your computer, such a virus is inevitably vulnerable.

Why? Virus contains public key, generates random session key (ideally in memory-locked pages that cannot be swapped out), encrypts all your data with session key, encrypts session key with public key, writes encrypted session key to a file, wipes session key from memory, then shuts down.

Assuming you don't notice the virus before all of this happens, you're toast unless you can get a copy of the private key.

To overcome this flaw, the virus writer would have to send the files to a pre-known IP address for off-site encryption (which among other problems would probably be a pretty noticeable activity). Doing so would presumably also expose the author to risk that the computer in question (and presumably he himself) could be siezed.

Did you mean decryption? If so, yes, the writer would have to have you ship your session key file to him so he could decrypt it and give you your unique decryption key. I don't think that activity is nearly as risky to the writer as trying to figure out how to collect the money, though. Following money trails is something the world's law enforcement agencies are very good at.

Re:Just wait...

You are absolutely wrong. PKI was designed with the purpose of preventing man-in-the-middle attacks. The virus writer would include the public key in the virus with an associated encryption algorithm. The problem arised with decryption. In order to decrypt a file you would need an associated private key. Now if this key is available inside the virus it would be just as easy to find as the password within the article.

In fact the whole idea of cryptography revolves around the encryption algorithm telling you nothing about a method to decrypt the data it encrypts (At least without a certain key). These are called trapdoor one-way functions.

The most realistic way I can think of writing such a virus would be to provide and encryption algo in the virus and then provide a decryption program when the intended victim has paid you the money. Now aren't you glad I'm not writing viruses?

Wow...

Hmm...

It also works for new Windows XP Professional installs.

Strange.

News That's Old, Stuff that's Stale

Hasn't this been around for a while? According to this page [symantec.com], the password has been know for at least a month.

hold on...

you mean that when they pay up the people actually let them get their files back? you would think any criminal would just delete them, say that they would give them back and then just take off with the money; they are already breaking the law, whats another one added to that? I wonder if this will now work like it should in the perfect open source community though, a bug is found, someone patches it, the new stuff is available within the day, maybe even better than before?

Re:hold on...

you mean that when they pay up the people actually let them get their files back? you would think any criminal would just delete them, say that they would give them back and then just take off with the money; they are already breaking the law, whats another one added to that

If you don't give the files back you remove the incentive for other infected users to pay up.

If it's the same password...

If it's the same password for every infection, wouldn't it be likely that the first victim who actually paid for it would then release it to the wild to screw-over the extortionist ASAP?

From the TFA

The most interesting part of TFA: "Victims are only told the password if they buy drugs from one of three online pharmacies."

Are online pharmacies so unregulated that criminals can extort people as a means for advertising?

Wow.

weird

Strike anyone else as odd that the BBC (et al.) ran this story big time - made the world service - on the same day that Microsoft announced their all in one security suite, that, by coincidence, protects against such virus'?

Thank the GPL

The virus writers could have used a GPL-based crypt library, but realized that there would be legal issues involved, requiring them to open-source the whole virus.

Obvious problem

There seems to be one glaring problem with the idea of ransomware:
Eventually you're gonna piss off the wrong person.
Imagine the DoD or the CIA getting hit with this. They lookup the registar of the sites you are supposed to buy the drugs from. They then go visit that registar's main office (borders, what borders? we're the CIA, we've never paid attention to soviernty in the past.). They politely ask the registar to hand over all information on the person paying for the domain name (for the definition of polite which involves pointing guns at and kicking people in the head). Once they know who is paying for the web sites (credit info/check info), they visit that person and politely ask for the password to unlock the virus (same definition of polite).
If it's the DoD which gets hit, replace CIA with a Navy SEAL team.

Drats. Time to change passwd on the server farm!

Um diddle diddle diddle um diddle ay
Um diddle diddle diddle um diddle ay
mf2lro8sw03ufvnsq034jfowr18f3cszc20vmw!
Even though the sound of it Is something quite atrocious
If you say it loud enough
You'll always sound precocious
mf2lro8sw03ufvnsq034jfowr18f3cszc20vmw !
Um diddle diddle diddle um diddle ay
Um diddle diddle diddle um diddle ay
Because I was afraid to speak
When I was just a lad My father gave me nose a tweak And told me I was bad
But then one day I learned a word That saved me aching nose
The biggest word I ever heard And this is how it goes:
Oh, mf2lro8sw03ufvnsq034jfowr18f3cszc20vmw!
Even though the sound of it
Is something quite atrocious
If you say it loud enough
You'll always sound precocious
mf2lro8sw03ufvnsq034jfowr18f3cszc20vmw !

Re:Wow!

You know you really should change the default on those types of things.

Re:Erm call me stupid but . . .

How else are you supposed to do it? Or did TFA mean that it was stored in plaintext in the code?

I was confused by that as well. I presume plaintext, since storing a hash and comparing a hash generated from user input seems standard practice... at least in the non-virus writting community.

Ya think the writter had a PHB leaning on him to meet deadline?