Re: Ransomware

2008-06-12 Thread James Muir
Marcos el Ruptor wrote: I've just looked at the virus. Just curious -- where were you able to download the virus from? -James - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL

Re: Ransomware

2008-06-12 Thread Marcos el Ruptor
On 12 Jun 2008, at 03:05, James Muir wrote: Just curious -- where were you able to download the virus from? www.offensivecomputing.net Just be careful. Do not run it. It does not spread itself, but it will encrypt all the sensitive files on all the drives and then self- destruct. If you

Re: Ransomware

2008-06-11 Thread The Fungi
On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 11:41:56PM +0100, Dave Howe wrote: The key size would imply PKI; that being true, then the ransom may be for a session key (specific per machine) rather than the master key it is unwrapped with. Per the computerworld.com article: Kaspersky has the public key in

Re: Ransomware

2008-06-11 Thread Ilya Levin
Allen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Agreed, but..., well there is the small matter of figuring out /who/ is doing it and that just might require some small bit of technology. Certainly, it is not mutual exclusive. However factor an RSA key hardly can help with that. At least two defects in this

Re: Ransomware

2008-06-11 Thread Leichter, Jerry
| The key size would imply PKI; that being true, then the ransom may | be for a session key (specific per machine) rather than the master | key it is unwrapped with. | | Per the computerworld.com article: | |Kaspersky has the public key in hand ? it is included in the |Trojan's code ?

Re: Ransomware

2008-06-11 Thread The Fungi
On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 11:53:54AM -0400, Leichter, Jerry wrote: Returning to the point of the earlier question - why doesn't someone pay the ransom once and then use the key to decrypt everyone's files: Assuming, as seems reasonable, that there is a session key created per machine and then

Re: Ransomware

2008-06-11 Thread Dave Howe
The Fungi wrote: On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 11:41:56PM +0100, Dave Howe wrote: The key size would imply PKI; that being true, then the ransom may be for a session key (specific per machine) rather than the master key it is unwrapped with. Per the computerworld.com article: Kaspersky has

RE: Ransomware

2008-06-11 Thread Dave Korn
Dave Howe wrote on 11 June 2008 19:13: The Fungi wrote: On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 11:41:56PM +0100, Dave Howe wrote: The key size would imply PKI; that being true, then the ransom may be for a session key (specific per machine) rather than the master key it is unwrapped with. Per the

RE: Ransomware

2008-06-11 Thread Leichter, Jerry
| Why are we wasting time even considering trying to break the public key? | | If this thing generates only a single session key (rather, a host key) | per machine, then why is it not trivial to break? The actual encryption | algorithm used is RC4, so if they're using a constant key without

RE: Ransomware

2008-06-11 Thread Dave Korn
Leichter, Jerry wrote on 11 June 2008 20:04: Why are we wasting time even considering trying to break the public key? If this thing generates only a single session key (rather, a host key) per machine, then why is it not trivial to break? The actual encryption algorithm used is RC4,

Re: Ransomware

2008-06-11 Thread Marcos el Ruptor
On 11 Jun 2008, at 20:13, Dave Howe wrote: This would seem to imply they already verified the public key was constant in the trojan and didn't differ between machines (or that I'm giving Kaspersky's team too much credit with my assumptions). I've just looked at the virus. Upon invocation, it

Re: Ransomware

2008-06-11 Thread Arshad Noor
- Original Message - From: Jerry Leichter [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Dave Korn [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Email List - Cryptography cryptography@metzdowd.com Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2008 12:04:21 PM (GMT-0800) America/Los_Angeles Subject: RE: Ransomware | Why are we wasting time even

Re: Ransomware

2008-06-10 Thread Peter Gutmann
Leichter, Jerry [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Speculation about this kind of attack has made the rounds for years. It appears the speculations have now become reality. It's not speculation, encryption virii have been around for at least ten years, although the encryption used was pretty crude and

Re: Ransomware

2008-06-10 Thread Ilya Levin
Leichter, Jerry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Computerworld reports: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasicarticleId=9094818 on a call from Kaspersky Labs for help breaking encryption used by some ransomeware: Code that infects a system, uses a public key

Re: Ransomware

2008-06-10 Thread Alexander Klimov
On Mon, 9 Jun 2008, Leichter, Jerry wrote: Even worse, targeted malwared could attack your backups. If it encrypted the data on the way to the backup device, it could survive silently for months, by which time encrypting the live data and demanding the ransom would be a very credible threat.

Re: Ransomware

2008-06-10 Thread Dave Howe
Jim Youll wrote: If there's just one key, then Kaspersky could get maximum press by paying the ransom and publishing it. If there are many keys, then Kaspersky still has reached its press-coverage quota, just not as dramatically. The key size would imply PKI; that being true, then the ransom

Re: Ransomware

2008-06-09 Thread John Ioannidis
Leichter, Jerry wrote: Computerworld reports: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasicarticleId=9094818 This is no different than suffering a disk crash. That's what backups are for. /ji PS: Oh, backups you say.

Re: Ransomware

2008-06-09 Thread Jim Youll
On Jun 9, 2008, at 11:54 AM, Leichter, Jerry wrote: Computerworld reports: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasicarticleId=9094818 [...] Apparently earlier versions of this ransomware were broken because of a faulty implementation of the encryption. This

Re: Ransomware

2008-06-09 Thread Leichter, Jerry
On Mon, 9 Jun 2008, John Ioannidis wrote: | Date: Mon, 09 Jun 2008 15:08:03 -0400 | From: John Ioannidis [EMAIL PROTECTED] | To: Leichter, Jerry [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Cc: cryptography@metzdowd.com | Subject: Re: Ransomware | | Leichter, Jerry wrote: | Computerworld reports: | | http

Re: Ransomware

2008-06-09 Thread Anne Lynn Wheeler
John Ioannidis wrote: This is no different than suffering a disk crash. That's what backups are for. At Jim Gray's tribute on the 31st, Bruce Lindsay gave a talk about Jim's formalization of transaction processing enabled online transactions ... i.e. needed trust in the integrity of