Firms release decryption tools to battle Wildfire. Intel INTC 0.11% and the security firm Kaspersky Lab have released tools for freeing files that are being held to ransom by a nasty piece of malware called Wildfire. Wildfire is a variant of ransomware—the rapidly growing phenomenon where attackers trick people into clicking things they shouldn’t, then encrypt files or whole drives on their computers and demand payment for decrypting them. This particular variant has been targeting victims in the Netherlands and Belgium, with spam emails written in perfect Dutch , and a dummy transport company as the sender that uses a Dutch web address. Get Data Sheet , Fortune’s technology newsletter. Around 5,300 people were successfully targeted in just one month. The emails told them they had missed deliveries and needed to fill in a form to schedule a new delivery. The form was rigged to infect the victims’ computers. Victims were told to pay 1.5 bitcoins, or around $870, to rescue their files. In reality, the companies said, most victims were able to bargain down to 0.5 or 0.6 bitcoins. Intel and Kaspersky worked with the Dutch police and the European Cybercrime Centre to develop the decryption tool that is now available for free download. They also managed to take down the servers that were pumping out the spam. The companies are taking part in a public-private initiative to fight the ransomware scourge. Their tool now sits along others that can help victims of variants such as TeslaCrypt and CoinVault. Intel and Kaspersky noted that Wildfire was programmed not to infect people in eastern European countries, making it likely that people from that region were responsible—and keen not to get the local authorities on their case. Because they were able to get at the criminals’ servers, the companies and […]
