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The Mighty Buzzard writes:

In case you penguin botherers were feeling left out, the folks over at iTWire bring us this little fun bit o news [itwire.com]:

Eset [eset.com] says it has found a Linux variant of the KillDisk malware used in the late 2015 attack on the Ukraine electricity system [itwire.com].

Like its Windows counterpart, the Linux version of KillDisk encrypts files, rendering the affected system unbootable. It asks for the same 222 Bitcoin (around US$278,000) ransom, but the encryption key used is neither stored locally or sent to a remote server, so even if the perpetrators are paid they have no way of reversing the process.

Eset says its researchers have found a weakness in the encryption method that makes decryption "possible, albeit difficult." Exactly how decryption can be performed was not disclosed.

It's nice to feel noticed but I could personally do without this particular kind of attention.

Original Submission