TeslaCrypt Gives Up and Releases Master Decryption Key

Stu Sjouwerman | May 19, 2016

Larry Abrams from the Bleepingcomputer site noted: "In a surprising end to TeslaCrypt, the developers shut down their ransomware and released the master decryption key. Over the past few weeks, an analyst for ESET had noticed that the developers of TeslaCrypt have been slowly closing their doors, while their previous distributors have been switching over to distributing the CryptXXX ransomware.  

"When the ESET researcher realized what was happening, he took a shot in the dark and used the support chat on the Tesla payment site to ask if they would release the master TeslaCrypt decryption key. To his surprise and pleasure, they agreed to do so and posted it on their now defunct payment site.

TeslaCrypt Ransomware Closed

Now that the decryption key has been made publicly available, this allowed TeslaCrypt expert BloodDolly to update TeslaDecoder to version 1.0 so that it can decrypt version 3.0 and version 4.0 of TeslaCrypt encrypted files.  This means that anyone who has TeslasCrypt encrypted files with the .xxx, .ttt, .micro, .mp3, or encrypted files without an extension can now decrypt their files for free!

Read more how to do this at the post over at bleepingcomputer. 


Although TeslaCrypt is no longer a threat, we see countless strains of ransomware being created all the time. KnowBe4's integrated training and phishing platform allows you to send attachments with Word Docs with macros in them, so you can see which users open the attachments and then enable macros!

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Topics: Ransomware

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