All malware is bad, but ransomware is particularly insidious--ask any
ransomware victim. That's why a new attack scheme called "Pacman" has raised alarms, because it's even nastier than usual. Think of the classic
Pac-Man game's voracious yellow ball, chomping up all of your files. It takes only one click to infect a vulnerable PC, and the attack gives victims only 24 hours to pay the ransom in Bitcoins or risk losing all of the compromised data.
The current attack is particularly effective because it's so convincing. Pacman's first victims have been Danish chiropractors, who received emails with a subject line of "Possible new patient." Unlike the laughably amateurish writing of some phishing emails, this one was written in perfect Danish and included Dropbox links to MRI and CT scans of the problem for the doctor to review--except the links launched ransomware instead.
When a victim clicks the link, the pacman.exe file is extracted and begins to encrypt data on the infected system. The files are marked with a new file extension of ".ENCRYPTED," and the Windows desktop is replaced with the ransom demand. Pacman even hedges itself by installing a keystroke logging component and a "kill" process that can shut down Windows operating system functions such as taskmgr, cmd, regedit, making it very difficult to analyze or remove the malware.
