Sometimes, the fierce competition in the booming crypto ransomware market works in the favor of the victims whose priceless data is held hostage. That appears to be what played out on Tuesday when the criminals behind a package known as “Mischa” published what’s purported to be the secret crypto keys for the rival Chimera malware.
“Earlier this year we got access to big parts of their deveolpment [sic] system, and included parts of Chimera in our project,” the Mischa developers wrote in a message posted to Pastebin. “Additionally we now release about 3500 decryption keys from Chimera.”
Translation: As if breaking in to the Chimera developers’ network and stealing their code wasn’t enough of an affront, the competing Mischa gang now claims to have leaked the keys that defang Chimera forever.