CloudSek Specialists told about the strange extortionist GoodWill, which does not require money from the victims, but makes them do good deeds in exchange for decrypting files. For example, ransomware operators are told to distribute clothes to the homeless or pay medical bills to those who need urgent medical care but cannot afford it.
According to the researchers, GoodWill is predominantly distributed in India and, apparently, was created in the same country. It is likely that the ransomware is someone’s experiment, since so far the experts have not been able to detect a single GoodWill victim.
This malware was first noticed in March 2022. It is known that GoodWill is written in .NET and seems to be built on the basis of the open source malware HiddenTear. After infecting the system, it sits idle for 722.45 seconds to confuse dynamic analysis and also uses the AES_Encrypt function to encrypt using AES.
Once infected, GoodWill encrypts all documents, photos, videos, databases, and other important files and leaves a note asking victims to do three good deeds to get the key to decrypt the data. So, malware operators require:
- donate new clothes to the homeless, record it on video and post it on social networks;
- take at least five children from disadvantaged families to Dominos, Pizza Hut or KFC and feed them, take a photo and video of the process and publish it on social networks;
- provide financial assistance to those who need urgent medical care but cannot afford it, record the entire conversation and share the audio recording with GoodWill operators.
After completing all these actions, the victim should also write another post on social networks, talking about “how you turned into a kind person, becoming a victim of the GoodWill ransomware.”
Apparently, after that, the ransomware operators check all media files and messages sent by the victim on social networks, and if the conditions are met, they provide a data decryption kit, which includes the decryptor itself, a file with passwords and a video tutorial on how to recover all important data .