What Is Bad Rabbit? Petya-Style Ransomware Attack Hits Russia, Ukraine and More
A new ransomware attack called Bad Rabbit is spreading through computers in Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and Germany.
Russian company Kaspersky, which was also affected by the cyber attack, detailed on its blog that a number of websites have been compromised such as the Russian news agency Interfax and even Odessa International Airport and the payments systems of Kiev Metro.
Based on our investigation, this is a targeted attack against corporate networks, using methods similar to those used in the ExPetr attack. However, we cannot confirm it is related to ExPetr.
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The Bad Rabbit spreads through a fake Adobe Flash installer file that users are tricked into downloading and launching. The people behind the cyber attack hold for ransom the infected computer for 0.05 bitcoin, which is roughly $280 at the current exchange rate.
The hackers are pressuring the victims to pay as soon as possible because waiting around will increase the amount of the ransom.
It is unclear at the moment whether actually paying the ransom or finding a glitch in the ransomware coding will do anything although the folks behind Bad Rabbit claim that once the payment has been made, they will provide users a decrypt password they can use to free their computer.
Of course, affected users of Bad Rabbit are not advised to give in to the demands of the hackers not only because it does not guarantee that the compromised data will be back but also to discourage more ransomware attacks such as this.
Thankfully, a researcher at Cybereason appears to have figured out an early "vaccine" to prevent the malware from any more people from being infected. The steps can be viewed here.
Bad Rabbit is the third major ransomware attacks only this year with the first ones being the destructive NotPetya and WannaCry.
