New ‘sleeper’ ransomware laid dormant on infected PCs until this week, report says
A new strain of ransomware that had laid dormant on infected devices suddenly “woke up” at midnight on Monday, May 25, security firm KnowBe4 said in an alert issued today.
Ransomware encrypts all the files on the devices it infects and demands a ransom payment in exchange for the decryption key to give the content back to the original owner.
See also: Ransomware: Pay it or fight it?
KnowBe4 CEO Stu Sjouwerman says this new strain of malware, dubbed Locker, is “very similar to CryptoLocker,” the first successful modern form of ransomware that was released in late 2013 and was thwarted last year. Locker is a “sleeper” strain of malware, meaning that victims may have unintentionally downloaded it earlier, but that their devices were not encrypted until the ransomware was activated earlier this week.
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