Ransomware continuously evolves and updates its social engineering tactics to trick users into paying money to the cybercriminals.
The samples we’re seeing today not only leverage the Federal Bureau of Investigation (or any police authority for that matter), but on this occasion also use a non-malicious .MP3 file!
This audio file repeatedly informs users that their system is blocked because of a certain violation on the federal law they committed. In addition, to unlock the system, users need to pay $200 (USD). Trend Micro detects this as TROJ_RANSOM.CXB and TROJ_RANSOM.AAF.
When executed, TROJ_RANSOM.AAF. displays the following message:
It drops the file, 1.mp3 in the current directory of the malware. It also sends and receives information from the following malicious websites:
- {BLOCKED}.{BLOCKED}.156.30
- {BLOCKED}.{BLOCKED}.229.104
- {BLOCKED}.{BLOCKED}.44.239
- {BLOCKED}.{BLOCKED}.165.210
This attack comes hard on the heels of information published by senior threat researcher, Loucif Kharouni on a Ransomware variant known as Police Trojan. This Trojan shows a notification from the user’s local police about a certain crime they apparently committed and locks the system until they pay up.
