Romanian cybersecurity company Bitdefender has released a free universal decryptor for a nascent file-encrypting malware known as MortalKombat.
MortalKombat is a new ransomware strain that emerged in January 2023. It’s based on a commodity ransomware dubbed Xorist and has been observed in attacks targeting entities in the U.S., the Philippines, the U.K., and Turkey.
Xorist, detected since 2010, is distributed as a ransomware builder, allowing cyber threat actors to create and customize their own version of the malware.
This includes the ransom note, the file name of the ransom note, the list of file extensions targeted, the wallpaper to be used, and the extension to be used on encrypted files. A decryptor for Xorist was made available by Emsisoft in May 2016.
MortalKombat notably was deployed in recent attacks mounted by an unnamed financially motivated threat actor as a part of a phishing campaign aimed at a wide range of organizations.
Read more: thehackernews.com
