Bitdefender releases free MortalKombat ransomware decryptor tool

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Bitdefender has produced a cost-free decryption instrument for the MortalKombat ransomware strain which has risen to prominence in the latest months.

1st observed by Cisco Talos researchers in January, the strain has been made use of to concentrate on a raft of victims in the UK, US, and additional afield to steal cryptocurrency.

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In a blog site submit on 28 February, Bitdefender said the decryption resource can be “run silently” through a command line. The firm added that this could enable automatic deployment in large networks if desired.  

The decryptor does not demand set up on infected programs and scans a machine filesystem to establish specific information infected by the ransomware strain. Consumers are also capable to generate backups of encrypted files as a contingency.  

This marks the most current in a series of decryptor applications rolled out by Bitdefender in modern decades. The firm earlier released decryptors for REvil and GandCrab ransomware strains. 

How does MortalKombat work? 

Based on the Xorist ransomware pressure, MortalKombat is ordinarily distribute by way of phishing email messages and targets exposed remote desktop protocol (RDP) scenarios, Bitdefender claimed. 

A the latest analyze from Cisco observed that the first an infection vector for MortalKombat generally normally takes the type of a phishing email in which attackers impersonate CoinPayments, a cryptocurrency payment gateway and wallet. 

Emails focusing on end users often comprise a spoofed sender email, luring in unsuspecting victims.  

“A destructive ZIP file is attacked with a filename resembling a transaction ID outlined in the email system, engaging the recipient to unzip the malicious attachment and look at the contents, which is a destructive BAT loader,” scientists stated.  

After embedded inside of an infected equipment, the ransomware strain targets user crypto wallets and tracks person activity to identify wallet addresses.  

If effective in pinpointing a crypto wallet tackle, this is transferred to the attacker’s server and swapped with a malicious tackle to compromise upcoming transactions. Afflicted consumers are fulfilled with a ransom take note and their machine wallpaper is altered to an impression from the Mortal Kombat recreation collection. 

Little is recognised about the ransomware’s developers and working design, in accordance to researchers. Even so, the ransomware was very first noticed in a fiscally-enthusiastic marketing campaign of attacks which harnessed a new variation of the Laplas Clipper malware written in Go.

“The name of the ransomware and the wallpaper it drops on the victim program are nearly undoubtedly a reference to the MortalKombat media franchise, which encompasses a series of popular video games and movies,” a Cisco Talos site publish read through.