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by John W. Simek, Vice President of Sensei Enterprises, Inc.

Variants of Cerber Ransomware Targeting MS Office 365 E-mail Users

June 29, 2016

It seems like we hear about some new strain of ransomware every day. The latest is a variant of Cerber ransomware that is targeting Office 365 e-mail users with a massive zero-day attack. The ransomware has the ability to bypass the built-in security tools of Office 365. Pretty scary stuff.

If you do get infected with the new strain and don't have a good backup, it will cost you around $800 to get the decryption key. The success of ransomware seems to be driving higher costs – we don't see too many $300-$500 ransoms any more. If there is any good news, the system compromise occurs when you enable macros, which are disabled by default. Macros are also used to launch Locky and Dridex ransomware infections. Obviously, the way to stop the current attack from Cerber is to NOT enable macros, assuming you violated the first rule of not clicking on links you shouldn't have clicked on or opening a suspicious attachment.

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