Discovered the “Obama Virus”, which disables Antiviruses
By Prempal Singh
After the launch, the “Obama Virus” attempts to complete the processes of antivirus programs, including solutions from Kaspersky Lab, McAfee and Rising Antivirus.
Experts in the field of cyber security from MalwareHunterTeam have discovered a dangerous cryptographic virus, named after former US President Barack Obama. When a device is infected with a program called the Eternal Blue Virus-extortionist Barack Obama, a photo of the 44th US president appears on the screen. The extortionist suppresses the activity of antiviruses installed on the computer. The specialists fixed its influence on such well-known products as Kaspersky and McAfee.
After the end of the anti-virus program, harmful software scans the computer and encrypts all the exe files on it. The impact also falls on the contents of the Windows folder, which ignores other viruses. When someone will run such files, it will automatically launch a virus program. After infection, the image of Barack Obama appears on the screen, which is accompanied by contact information of hackers: to get instructions on redemption, the user should contact them at the e-mail address given. How this virus spreads is still unknown.
Obama is not the only politician, whose image was used in the hacker campaign. In 2016, a coder worked on the network, showing Donald Trump on a gilded computer.
Experts traditionally do not advise paying anything to intruders, as there is no guarantee that hackers will provide keys for decryption.
Earlier it was reported that the number of victims of extortion viruses increased by 59% over the past year, and the average repurchase amount reached $ 5,000.