Petya no longer a threat as developer releases master decryption key

With its developer publishing the master decryption key, Petya is no longer a threat to cyber-security.

The key makes restoring file access a lot easier.

According to commentators, it was not yet clear as to why Janus Cybercrime Solutions decided to do this, as Petya and its variants had been very successful over the past few years.

With the master decryption key, all three existing Petya Strains including the Mischa and GoldenEye ransomware, which both used can be decrypted. The Mischa and GoldeEye ransomware used the exact same code base as Petya.

These latter two were also evolutions of the original malware, with new features added on top and other small code changes. However, the key does not work witn the NotPetya strain, since it was not developed by Janus Cybercrime Solutions.

Though the published #Petya master key works for all versions including #GoldenEye One security researchers need still need to develop a decryption tool which makes use of this master key. Even though Petya encryption had been cracked many times already, the master decryption key-based tool can decrypt files a lot faster.

However it was not clear who will build this new tool or when it will be released.