Security News > 2020 > March > Researchers Warn of Novel PXJ Ransomware Strain
Researchers have discovered a new strain of ransomware, dubbed "PXJ," which emerged in the wild in early 2020.
While PXJ performs functions similar to other ransomware variants, it does not appear to share the same underlying code with most known ransomware families, researchers said.
"The emergence of new ransomware strains is almost a daily occurrence nowadays, facilitated by the ability of new threat actors to buy ransomware for a low cost or even obtain code for free on some forums," said Megan Roddie, cyber-threat researcher with IBM X-Force in a Thursday post.
"Many ransomware codes begin by encrypting files with the AES algorithm, a symmetric cipher, because it can encrypt files faster, helping finish the task before the malicious process can be interrupted," said researchers.
Upon examining the two new ransomware samples uploaded to VirusTotal, researchers said they noticed that the attacker email addresses, dropped files and mutex all appeared to be the same between the two.