Cyber Risks · Unit 42 Palo Alto Networks

Latest Tesla Crypt Ransomware Borrows Code From Carberp Trojan

Summary: Unit 42 researchers found that the newest TeslaCrypt variant, introduced in late September, borrows string obfuscation and dynamic library/function loading code from the Carberp banking Trojan, whose source code was posted for sale on an underground Russian forum in mid-2013 and later leaked publicly. The strings are encrypted with the RC2 algorithm using a static key of 'sdflk35jghs', and the initialization vector is generated by removing the first and last 4 characters, not counting base64 padding.

Why it matters: Carberp's leaked source is now free for any author to copy, and TeslaCrypt's reuse of it may cut both ways: the same widely known code that slows static analysis can also make detection easier for security software.

Read the original at Unit 42 Palo Alto Networks ↗

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