WannaCry decryption tool takes open source way

WannaCry ransomware that has affected the whole Internet for over the past week has now received a fix. A French security researcher has found out the to patch encrypted Windows XP machines using a tool that is available as an open source offering.

Security researcher Adrien Guinet has been working on his decryption tool in his own lab for some time. The tool, called WannaKey, cracks the encryption by finding prime numbers that constitute an RSA private key. As the WannaCry ransomware uses RSA private key to encrypt target machines, the latest open source development works well in solving the infamous issue.

Guinet has published a tweet to confirm the full key decryption on Windows XP system. Further, he has released the tool on a GitHub repository.

If your system is infected by WannaCry ransomware, the private keys used for encryption are stored in the memory. In most cases, these keys are not deleted. But if the associated memory is not reallocated and deleted, the prime numbers representing the key can be recovered.

You can take help from the WannaKey tool to protect your precious files. Notably, your computer should not be rebooted after being infected in order to receive full treatment from the latest development. The researcher has also clearly mentioned that the tool might not work in every case.

Nevertheless, if all goes well, you would succeed using the open source power!

The latest WannaKey version includes the ability to automatically find WannaCry process IDs as well as allows you to perform the decryption directly using malware’s interface.