back to article British duo arrested for running malware encryption service

Two British suspects have been arrested accused of running the refud.me encryption site VXers use to evade antivirus. The National Crime Agency says the suspects from Colchester, Essex have been bailed until February next year. The pair operated the refud.me service which allowed VXers to test their malware against antivirus …

  1. Mark 65

    Don't believe you need DBAN

    I've seen papers that conclude that just zeroing a drive is enough and I'd have thought that any malware perp worth their weight in turds would be running FDE in which case I'd imagine it's pretty easy to destroy data without the need for a 3-35 pass wipe.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Don't believe you need DBAN

      My understanding is that with a single write pass especially with known values like 00 then not all domains are switched, reading just the domains that differ from the known value statistically you can recover a lot. Doubly so if your data is verifiable via a known format structure

  2. Sir Runcible Spoon
    WTF?

    Sir

    Out of curiosity, can we know what crime they were charged with?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Sir

      Their crime was not working for the NSA

      To be honest though these guys are only going to be a route to finding small fish, the big fish dont need a third party software validation tool, why would they when they make enough money to buy every AV.

      So they may get some leads on big fish by squeezing the wannabes but as they could have kept it running whilst identifying the sites customers I this this is just politics. Personally I think this is just to show that the security services are doing something against malware, I presume with the government cutbacks their jobs might be on the line.

    2. Roo
      Windows

      Re: Sir

      "Two people have been arrested on suspicion of operating a website offering services to help criminals overcome anti-virus software and disguise malicious software (malware),"

      Despite pressing those charges, the NCA are very reticent to assert that the tools were exclusively used to help criminals. It's a timely reminder that Citizens of Dave's empire should not offer assistance to criminals. In fact Citizens would be well advised not to offer services or assistance to anyone because everyone is a criminal until proven innocent.

      ..." following a joint investigation led by the National Crime Agency and Trend Micro Incorporated, a global leader in security software and solutions."

      So far that arrangement seems to be working well for Trend, not every company gets a ringing endorsement of being a "global leader" from the NCA. The next logical step will be for Trend to direct the attentions of the NCA, Ravey Davey & Terrified Theresa towards all that dangerous encryption stuff that gets in the way of their products.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    You lose

    More crims off to the slammer.

    1. Danny 2

      Re: You lose

      Bailed for trial means innocent for now. I've been having to remind a fair few cops and lawyers of that lately.

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