The security vendor Bitdefender has updated its anti-ransomware vaccine to add support for the latest versions of the CTB-Locker, Locky and TeslaCrypt ransomware families.
The well-known Bitfender Anti-Ransomware toolkit has been disturbing PC users for a few years already. However, since crypto-ransomware started becoming popular, users understood that, once locked, recovering the files was almost impossible without paying the crook’s ransom fee.
Still, if the ransomware contains encryption flaws, it is always up to luck which lets security researchers create decryptors for the various variants. Nevertheless, cases like these are very rare and often found in smaller, newly appeared ransomware families.
However, as everyone has heard, it’s better to prevent than to cure. Thus, in order to help users stay safe against ransomware, Bitdefender has just added a much-needed update to its anti-ransomware toolkit, which until now has included support only for the CryptoWall and CryptoLocker families.
The latest version of the anti-ransomware toolkit (1.0.11.26) includes additional support for CTB-Locker, Locky and TeslaCrypt.
Unlike the domination of CTB-Locker nowadays, Locky ransomware has just appeared on the scene. Meanwhile, TeslaCrypt has seen a resurgence over the past weeks. No matter the sequence, CryptoWall, Locky, and TeslaCrypt, in this order, are considered as the top 3 most popular ransomware families these days.
“The new tool is an outgrowth of the Cryptowall vaccine program, in a way,” Chief Security Strategist Catalin Cosoi stated. “We had been looking at ways to prevent this ransomware from encrypting files even on computers that were not protected by [the] Bitdefender antivirus and we realized we could extend the idea.”
A week ago, the security researcher Sylvain Sarméjeanne was exploring scenarios in which he could abuse bugs in the Locky ransomware to create a vaccine against the threat. However, his work could not materialize into a concrete vaccine.
At the same time, Sean Williams, who is the creator of Cryptostalker (a tool to detect crypto-ransomware on Linux systems), wants to port it to Windows and Mac as soon as it’s ready.
