Petya virus is something worse than ransomware, new analysis shows
The virus that began spreading through European computers yesterday informed users that they could unlock their machines by paying a $300 ransom. But it looks like the bug’s creators had no intention of restoring the machines at all. In fact, a new analysis reveals they couldn’t; the bug was designed to wipe computers outright.
Matt Suiche, founder of the cybersecurity firm Comae, writes in a blog post today that after analyzing the virus, known as Petya, his team determined that it was a “wiper,” not ransomware. “We can see the current version of Petya clearly got rewritten to be a wiper and not a actual ransomware,” Suiche writes.
The virus going around is a…
