Everyone's looking for a fresh spin on Cryptolocker, the maddening ransomware that has become more prominent in recent days, and Umbrella Security Labs has come up with one: A 3D visualization set to music.
Dan Hubbard, CTO for the security research outfit, describes the visualization as representing relationships between domains in Cryptolocker attacks and how the malware ripples across networks. As ransomware, Cryptolocker encrypts victims' files and then the extortionists behind it demand payment to release the data.
The visualization is "not only visually stunning, but useful from a research perspective," Hubbard writes in a blog post.
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Umbrella has built the visualization by taking advantage of a Big Data-based system that categorizes and blocks Cryptolocker based on relationships between domains (Umbrella is associated with OpenDNS, which offers DNS resolution services).
Attention to Cryptolocker has been ratcheted up since the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team issued an alert about it to Windows users earlier this month.
Read more about wide area network in Network World's Wide Area Network section.