New AlphaCrypt ransomware, the new threat in the criminal underground

Ransomware is among most popular malware families in the criminal underground, recently security firms have discovered numerous variant targeting desktop and mobile platforms.

Recently a new strain of ransomware dubbed AlphaCrypt has been detected in the wild by malware experts, despite the GUI of the malware is identical to TeslaCrypt it operates similarly to the recently discovered Cryptowall 3.0.

“While this may look identical to TeslaCrypt it does have some improvements like deleting the VSS to make sure you aren’t saved by your shadow volume,” reads a blog post published by Webroot. 

As many other ransomware variants, also AlphaCrypt asks for the ransom to be paid in Bitcoin in order to unlock the resources.

Experts at Webroot highlighted that victims of the AlphaCrypt ransomware are not immediately forced to use install the Tor browser to complete the payment, instead the malware authors give the possibility to use URLs that refers public gates the servers controlled by crooks.

Security experts noticed also that ransomware creators are laundering their Bitcoin rapidly since the currency value is dropping.

“The volatility of this variant is quite high since it creates new instances of common windows processes to do the encryption routine to try and be as covert as possible and is extremely similar to how Cryptowall  3.0 operates,” the researchers noted.

The malware researcher Brad Duncan has published an interesting analysis of the AlphaCrypt ransomware explaining that the it is currently delivered via the popular Angler exploit kit.

The experts warned of the low VirusTotal detection rate associated to the payload of the AlphaCrypt ransomware and of the Flash exploit ( 5/57 and 2/57, respectively) on VirusTotal)used to distribute it.

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – AlphaCrypt ransomware, cybercrime)