Welcome to DR's note, your weekly dose of knowledge from Circuit Stitch Blog.

 Today we will talk about the "GoodWill" ransomware

 

Have you heard of this ransomware?  It is called "GoodWill" and it seems to aim at making you a better person.  You may be asking yourself how does it do this?  Well, I shall discuss with you how it is done.  First, your computer will need to be infected with this ransomware, this can be done like any other virus you get on your PC.  You clicked on a link you shouldn’t have, downloaded a pirated movie or game, went to that porn site, etc.  But now your computer is infected and there is only one way to get it decrypted.

 

Technically there are several "Activities" in this one way but we shall look at them one at a time.  The first "Activity" they require you to do is to cloth a roadside homeless person.  But you not only have to give them clothing, but you must also create a Facebook, Instagram, or Whatsapp story about clothing the homeless.  You must also use the photo frame they give you and encourage others to do it as well.  Once you do this then you have to send them an email with a screenshot of the post and the post link, here is my favorite part, it says and I quote "later our team will verify the whole case and promotes you for the next activity".  So then you have to wait till their team verifies what you have done, then you can move on to the next "Activity".  Let's look at the next "Activity" to see what our "GoodWill" entail.

 

The next "Activity" is to pick up 5 poor children from your neighborhood and take them out for dinner at Dominos, Pizza Hut, or KFC.  Then once again you will have to make a story post on your social media, this time though the kids have to be in the picture and have smiles on their faces.  You must again use their picture frame and take screenshots of the post, this time though you will need to take a picture of your receipt to send along with to the ransomware people.  Also again you will have to wait to have it verified before you can move on to the third and final "Activity".

 

The final "Activity", now requires you to go to your nearest hospital, and find someone that needs their care paid for because they don't have the money and pay their medical bill.  That's correct, you must go pay their medical bill, or as the ransomware states "provide them maximum part of the required amount."  You will also need to get selfies with the person you just paid their medical bill, record the whole conversation between you and them and send it back to the ransomware people.  But you’re not done yet, after you have done everything above you then need to and I quote, "Write a beautiful article on your Facebook and Instagram by sharing your wonderful experience to other people that how you transform yourself into a kind human being by becoming victim of a ransomware called Good Will".  So you not only have to do all these "goodwill" acts but at the end, you have to create a post saying that this ransomware has changed your life for the better.  Then hopefully this ransomware group with send you a decryption key that you can decrypt your files.

 

Well, I don't know about you but I don't need ransomware forcing me into performing "activities" and making me post about it on social media to create awareness about the plight of being a human.  Are these things happening, yes. Do you wish more people would help with these issues, yep.  Should you hi-jack someone’s files and force them into this position in the hope it will make them a better person in the end, nope.  Ransomware in any form no matter have "pure" your intentions are, is illegal.  The easiest way to fight against ransomware is to keep your computer up-to-date with the latest security updates and to have a good anti-virus in place.

 

I hope this has informed you about some of the newest ransomware that could not only impact your work system but even your computer at home.  If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment below.  If you have any ideas for future DR notes please let me know, and maybe it will be a future DR note.  I hope you are having a great week and Be Awesome!

 

 

 

 

Sources:

 

New 'GoodWill' Ransomware Forces Victims to Donate Money and Clothes to the Poor: https://thehackernews.com/2022/05/new-goodwill-ransomware-forces-victims.html

 

Eerie GoodWill ransomware forces victims to publish videos of good deeds on social media: https://blog.malwarebytes.com/ransomware/2022/05/eerie-goodwill-ransomware-forces-victims-to-publish-videos-of-good-deeds-on-social-media/#:~:text=GoodWill%20ransomware%20functions%20like%20any,to%20recover%20your%20locked%20files.

Welcome to DR's note, your weekly dose of knowledge from Circuit Stitch.

 This week we continue the series of Know thy enemy, and this week we talk about Worms.

    Worms are a strange sounding malware for a computer, but this is one of the most damaging viruses that can be on your devices.  Well, what are worms and how do they harm your devices.    Here is how Malwarebytes (a popular anti-malware software) defines worms, a computer worm is a subset of the Trojan horse malware that can propagate or self-replicate from one computer to another without human activation after breaching a system.  Basically, after you have installed the Trojan (the malware we talked about last week) and activated it, it will do its thing as it infects your system.  It will self-replicate in that it will create many of itself to not only hide in your system, and then it will send out these copies of itself to other systems connected to it.  It does this, infecting of connected systems across the internet or LAN(Local area network).  Once you are infected with the worm it can do several things other than the self-replicating, and they are; install other malware, consume bandwidth, delete files, overload networks, steal data, open a backdoor, and deplete hard drive space.  It's worth mentioning, there is a difference between a Computer worm and a worm virus.  The former doesn't need any human interaction for it to work and run itself, the latter does, you need to activate it for it to start on its journey of destroying systems. 

    There have been many types of computer worms out there, here are some of the more infamous ones that if you are curious give them a Google; Morris worm, Bagle (aka beagle, mitglieder, and lodeight), Blaster, Conficker, ILOVEYOU, mydoom, Ryuk, SQL Slammer, Storm Worm, Stuxnet, and most recently the WannaCry.  Now, the WannaCry was more of a ransomware attack, but had worm components in it to help it infect hundreds of thousands of computers over 150 countries in just a few hours.  Crazy stuff, this malware is no joke if you get infected.

    What are the symptoms of a computer worm, and how do you get rid of them?  First the former, you will notice your computer slows down, freezes, and crashes a lot.  It will also throw up error messages on a constant basis.  Some other things you could notice would be missing or corrupt files, rapidly depleting hard drive space even if are not downloading or installing anything new, and you may notice firewall breach alerts.  How do you get rid of them?  The best solution is to get a good antivirus or anti-malware (my suggestions are Malwarebytes, they have a good track record), but do not op-in to a free one as it will most likely not fix the issue you are trying to fix.  If you try and just get rid of the virus yourself you will find that it might be impossible, as several factors will come into play; the worm could be active(so the files are in use and can't be deleted), more than one worm process may be running (the act of stopping one can just have it restarted back up by another), it has hooks into registry links that make it incredible hard to pin down and delete, and finally it could have infected your back-up so that if you would try and just load a back-up of windows you will just load a back-up with the worm still infecting your system.  If you do not want to pay for anti-malware, then your only other option is to completely erase your hard drive and reinstall your operating system from scratch. 

I hope this have been a little enlightening for you on the dangers of a worm to your system and any systems connected to it.  As always, you can leave a comment below if you have any questions.  Thank you and have a great week.

Welcome to DR's note, your weekly dose of knowledge from Circuit Stitch.

This week we continue the Know thy enemy series, and we talk about Trojans.

    So what are Trojans?  Now, we are not talking about the rubber balloons that come in the square wrapper.  We are going to talk about the malicious virus's that infect your computer.  So let's define what a Trojan is, a Trojan is a virus that can infect either any form of technology, what it does is it describes itself as a legitimate piece of software or code that once on a device it can give attackers the access they need to export files, modify data, delete files, or just plain alter the contents on the device it is infecting.  They might use different types of tactics to get you to fall victim, like social engineering, spoofing or phishing.  Trojans can come packed into game downloads, software tools for your device, apps, or even software patches. 

    So how can you protect against Trojans?  The best and easiest way is to keep your security software up-to-date.  No matter what you are using, if you do not have your security software up-to-date, then you can easily fall victim.  The patches that put in these up-dates is because they found new threats, that without the patch leaves you vulnerable.  But just keeping your security software up-to-date is not enough, it takes some know-how and restraint from you.  Here are a couple of tips, firstly downloading any pirated media (music, movies, games, books, software, etc.) could potentially be Trojans.  The attacker is looking for you to be like  “Hey want to check out the new Spider-Man movie for free, just click this link it's super safe and legit”.  Secondly, you can get it from unsolicited means like scam emails or text messages that have an attachment or link to click on.  They can seem like they are coming from a familiar source, but be careful and vigilant.  Thirdly,  only access website with the beginning of HTTPS.  The S is very important because it means it is secure, and keeps you safe.  Lastly, never sign in to an account if after you clicked on something it pops open a new tab or window and asks you to sign in, if you need to sign in go to the actual website and do it.  That way you know that you are not possibly signing in to a spoof site just used to get your credentials. 

    I hope this opens your eyes to how bad Trojan virus's can be and what type of havoc they can wreck.  As always if you have any questions feel free to message me.  Thank you and have a great week.