EKANS is really a new ransomware that targets industrial handle systems:
But EKANS furthermore uses another technique to ratchet up the discomfort: It’s made to terminate 64 various software procedures on victim computer systems, including many which are particular to industrial control techniques. Which allows it to after that encrypt the info that those control program programs connect to. While crude in comparison to additional malware purpose-constructed for commercial sabotage, that targeting can nevertheless break the program used to keep track of infrastructure, as an oil firm’s pipelines or perhaps a factory’s robots. Which could possess potentially dangerous outcomes, like preventing employees from remotely supervising or managing the equipment’s operation.
EKANS is actually the next ransomware going to industrial control systems. In accordance with Dragos, another ransomware stress referred to as Megacortex that very first appeared last spring included all the same industrial control system process-killing functions, and could in fact be considered a predecessor to EKANS produced by exactly the same hackers. But because Megacortex furthermore terminated a huge selection of other procedures, its industrial-control-system targeted functions went largely ignored.
Speculation is that is criminal inside origin, and not the task of a federal government.
It’s also the initial malware that’s named following a Pokémon character.
