Categories: Breaking NewsCyber CrimeMalware

Hidden Tear Ransomware is now open Source and available on GitHub

The Turkish security researchers Utku Sen has published the first open source ransomware for educational purposes that anyone can use.

Ransomware is now open Source and available in GitHub. Ransomware is one of most dangerous cyber threats for end-users, in the recent months the number of ransomware in the wild is increased as never before. Criminal underground has used ransomware to increase their business, security experts also discovered in a case the adoption of malware-as-a-service model to give the opportunity to everybody to build its ransomware campaign.

However is not easy for common people to give a look to the source code of ransomware, but now the Turkish researcher utkusen published on the Github platform the first open course Ransomware, for educational purposes.

Utku Sen unleashed his ransomware, the “Hidden Tear” is available on GitHub and it’s fully functional, it uses AES encryption to encrypt the files and displays a warning to users to pay up to get back their data.

utkusen warns, “While this may be helpful for some, there are significant risks. The Hidden Tear may be used only for Educational Purposes. Do not use it as a ransomware!”

The Features of Hidden Tear are:

Uses AES algorithm to encrypt files.
Sends encryption key to a server.
Encrypted files can be decrypt in decrypter program with encryption key.
Creates a text file in Desktop with given message.
Small file size (12 KB)
Doesn’t detected to antivirus programs (15/08/2015)

Note: At this point, I am not sure that the “Hidden Tear” it is not detected by AV programs, but I am not sure.

This Ransomware it is not so advanced like other threat like Cryptowall or Cryptolocker but it does his job, as educational purposes.

You can check the demonstration video made by utkusen:

About the Author Elsio Pinto

Elsio Pinto is at the moment the Lead Mcafee Security Engineer at Swiss Re, but he also as knowledge in the areas of malware research, forensics, ethical hacking. He had previous experiences in major institutions being the European Parliament one of them. He is a security enthusiast and tries his best to pass his knowledge. He also owns his own blog http://high54security.blogspot.com/

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Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – ransomware, cybercrime)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.