An anonymous reader writes: Security researchers have discovered a new form of ransomware written entirely in JavaScript and using the CryptoJS library to encode a user's files. Researchers say the file is being distributed through email attachments, according to SC Magazine, which reports that "Opening the attachment kicks off a series of steps that not only locks up the victim's files, but also downloads some additional malware onto the target computer. The attachment does not visibly do anything, but appears to the victim as a corrupted file. However, in fact it is busy doing its dirty work in the background. This includes deleting the Windows Volume Shadow Copy so the encrypted files cannot be recovered and the ransomware is set to run every time Windows starts up so it can capture any new information."
"It's a little bit unusual to see an actual piece of ransomware powered by a scripting language," one security executive tells the magazine, which suggests disabling e-mail attachments that contain a JavaScript file.
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