Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Who's Behind the GPcode Ransomware?

So, the ultimate question - who's behind the GPcode ransomware? It's Russian teens with pimples, using E-gold and Liberty Reserve accounts, running three different GPcode campaigns, two of which request either $100 or $200 for the decryptor, and communicating from Chinese IPs. Here are all the details regarding the emails they use, the email responses they sent back, the currency accounts, as well their most recent IPs used in the communication :

Emails used by the GPcode authors where the infected victims are supposed to contact them :
content715@yahoo.com
saveinfo89@yahoo.com
cipher4000@yahoo.com
decrypt482@yahoo.com

Virtual currency accounts used by the malware authors :
Liberty Reserve - account U6890784
E-Gold - account - 5431725
E-Gold - account - 5437838

Sample response email :
"Next, you should send $100 to Liberty Reserve account U6890784 or E-Gold account 5431725 (www.e-gold.com) To buy E-currency you may use exchange service, see or any other. In the transfer description specify your e-mail. After receive your payment, we send decryptor to your e-mail. For check our guarantee you may send us one any encrypted file (with cipher key, specified in any !_READ_ME_!.txt file, being in the directorys with the encrypted files). We decrypt it and send to you originally decrypted file. Best Regards, Daniel Robertson"

Second sample response email this time requesting $200 :
"The price of decryptor is 200 USD. For payment you may use one of following variants: 1. Payment to E-Gold account 5437838 (www.e-gold.com). 2. Payment to Liberty Reserve account U6890784 (www.libertyreserve.com). 3. If you do not make one of this variants, contact us for decision it. For check our guarantee you may send us ONE any encrypted file. We decrypt it and send to you originally decrypted file. For any questions contact us via e-mail. Best regards. Paul Dyke"

So, you've got two people responding back with copy and paste emails, each of them seeking a different amount of money? Weird. The John Dow-ish Daniel Robertson is emailing from 58.38.8.211 (Liaoning Province Network China Network Communications Group Corporation No.156,Fu-Xing-Men-Nei Street, Beijing 100031), and Paul Dyke from 221.201.2.227(Liaoning Province Network China Network Communications Group Corporation No.156,Fu-Xing-Men-Nei Street, Beijing 100031), both Chinese IPs, despite that these campaigners are Russians.

Here are some comments I made regarding cryptoviral extortion two years ago - Future Trends of Malware (on page 11; and page 21), worth going through.

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