Kaspersky white hats have again ruined the Cryptxxx malware by offering victims a free decryption tool that will unwind all variants of the menace.
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The researchers' work is significant; Cryptxxx is used in some of the most high-profile and prolific malvertising campaigns that have torn through the biggest websites across the world with infected ads that deliver any combination of trojan and exploit kit, before dropping the ransomware.
That combination is poison for for users whose machines meet the specifications for infection, normally some combination of Internet Explorer, a runtime like Flash, and missing patches.
[
theregister.co.uk...]
This is happy news if the good guys can keep the bad guys at bay, yet, and this is the think about it part, is yet another reason for the rise of ad blockers and BROWSERS having built-in (not add on) ad blocking capability.
This current atmosphere is protection from danger and annoyance is due entirely to greed, stupidity, and the failure of ad servicing companies to fully vet their offerings. The greed and stupidity part is on both sides (publisher and advertiser) with stupidity being the larger part.
In this instant case the good guys 1 bad guys 0, but it won't last because we all know the bad guys will just keep coming back.
Aside: if only the bad guys would work as hard at doing a real honest to goodness web business ... they might be genius! But there's a certain mind type that truly believes theft and extortion pay more than honest work. Sigh.
