Ransomware Creator Verifies, Latest Global Attack was not Petya
This week, another global attack hit the world. Initial reports claimed the attack was a version of the Petya ransomware. However, after further investigation, it was determined the global attack was not Petya. It wasn’t even ransomware. The malware variant spread throughout the attack, deemed NotPetya, is a cyber weapon used to for complete destruction.
Apparently, the developers of Petya, the ransomware, do not want to be affiliated with this most recent cyber attack. The creator, Janus Cybercrime Solutions, went to Twitter on June 28th in an attempt to clear their name. The face of Janus tweeted files lost to NotPetya could potentially be recovered by the Janus decryption key. According to Gizmodo, this gesture could be useless, due to the way NotPetya destroys the master boot record. However, if it does work, it could save several victims’ files. Additional details from Janus Cybercrime Solutions have not been released regarding the decryption key, or if it was tested to confirm it would decrypt NotPetya encrypted data.
