Morphisec Cyber Security Blog

New Locky – Zepto variant prevented by Morphisec! Ransomware with modified Eval mechanism evades all other security solutions.

Since Locky’s discovery in February 2016, it has emerged as one of the most prevalent and devastating ransomware threats of 2016. Over the last two months, ransomware in general has evolved greatly in delivery technique complexity, with Locky among the most insidious. 

In particular, Locky moved to the Zepto variant, executing from dll and not an executable, started using quant loader, and added more evasion techniques to its arsenal. 

One of Morphisec’s mandates is to share our expertise with the industry at large. You’ll find bylines and commentary by team members in numerous publications on everything from the cyber security implications of Brexit to improving supply chain cyber security. Following are a few of the latest articles by Morphisec experts.

The recent FireEye discovery of an Angler Exploit Kit variant that bypasses Microsoft’s Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) has taken the cyber security world by surprise – but it shouldn’t have. New variants of the Angler EK crop up constantly (see Javascript in IE Overtakes Flash as Number One Target for Angler Exploit Kit) and EMET was never meant to be infallible, just make it more difficult for hackers. EMET, which uses a set of predefined rules to prevent specific malware, is often relied upon to stop zero-day attacks on Windows systems until a patch is developed for the vulnerability. Although researchers have previously discovered vulnerabilities that allowed them to bypass EMET defenses, this is the first time an exploit in the wild has been successful.

Recently, software engineer and noted tech journalist Ben Dickson explored the growing threat of ransomware in an article in The Daily Dot. He gives a thorough yet remarkably non-techie overview before tackling the difficult part – what can companies and individuals do to protect themselves. Dickson turned to our own Ronen Yehoshua, CEO of Morphisec, to understand why traditional security approaches fail and possible solutions.