Malware Compels Users to Play Game to Score High Instead of Paying Ransom

A Korea-based undergraduate student has produced anime malware, which demands the infected to play a game to salvage access to their files.

The latest malware known as Rensenware is like a joke on the Ransomware, a kind of malware which is holding your files ransom till you pay a particular sum of money to the hacker. However, Rensenware is holding your files ransom till you score more than 200 Mn points in the anime shooter Touhou Seirensen (Unidentified Fantastic Object)'s "lunatic" level.

A student based in Korea developed Rensenware jokingly - the name rensenware itself is pun on the Touhou Seirensen. Kotaku has spoken with the student and came to know that he even cannot touch the score, which is comical keeping in view that Kotaku infected its personal computer with malware at the time of programming it.

But he was not the only person affected by the malware. He uploaded malware to the GitHub and went on to sleep; and then when he woke up, he realized that it had spread in such a manner that he was not prepared for it. The undergraduate student then has designed a software piece which kills the Rensenware, and then also uploaded it to the GitHub. Pcgamer.com posted on April 9th, 2017, stating that the student along with software piece; has even apologized for causing this mayhem.

The apology is implanted in a Rensenware "forcer" tool which Tvple Eraser has released to maneuver the memory of the game directly, getting around the encryption of the malware without playing the game. While the original source code of Rensenware has been taken down from the Github page of the creator, a new "cut" version has taken its place, showing off the original joke without actually any malicious forced encryption. It looks that Tvple eraser never tried to force Rensenware on any remote computers because most makers of ransomware do for profit and/or fun.

He has also gone ahead and updated the GitHub page to replace the source code of the malware with a tool allowing anyone who got infected with Rensenware to receive the encryption and skip to play the game. Let it be a warning for all of you: anime was a mistake.

» SPAMfighter News - 4/13/2017