New crypto virus a looming threat

The emergence of a variant on a virus that encrypts the victim's data with a strong 1,024-bit algorithm so the victim can't unscramble it without paying a ransom has begun to spread, potentially posing a major threat, according to the antimalware firm which discovered it.

Kaspersky Lab says the new variant of the Windows-based encryptor virus Gpcode, which hasn't been spotted for about 1 ½ years, is more of a threat than it was in the past because this time it is using strong encryption that so far has defied efforts to crack it.

"Up until now, we were able to crack the algorithms," says Roel Schouwenberg, senior antivirus researcher at Kaspersky Lab.

Earlier versions of Gpcode — which first appeared about 3 ½ years ago — used far weaker encryption than what it has today, plus it wasn't well implemented, making it fairly easy to crack, Schouwenberg says.