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Warning................Peta ransomware leverages Dropbox and overwrites hard drives

Trend Micro researchers spotted a new ransomware variant dubbed Petya that is delivered to victims who believe they are linking to a resume stored on a cloud storage site like Dropbox.

The email provides a link to, in the case studied by Trend Micro, a Dropbox storage location. The email is supposed to link to the applicant's resume, but instead the link is connected to a self-extracting executable file that unleashes a trojan into the system.

Researchers said the trojan blinds any antivirus programs defending the computer before downloading and executing the ransomware.Trend Micro said the cybercriminals asked for 0.99 Bitcoins to unlock the computer.

Once executed, Petya overwrites the entire hard drive MBR to prevent the victim's device from loading Windows normally or even restarting in Safe Mode. If the victim tries to reboot their computer they will be greeted by an ASCII skull and given an ultimatum to pay the ransom or have the files deleted.

http://www.scmagazine.com/petya-ransomware-overwrites-mbrs-and-leverages-cloud-services/article/485833/