EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

Annabelle, a doll-inspired horror movie series, is inspiring fear on a different type of screen in the form of a new ransomware. Discovered by cybersecurity researcher Bart Blaze, Annabelle includes some pretty broad-reaching capabilities.

Bleeping Computer reports that with all the harm the ransomware is equipped to inflict, it was designed more to disrupt than to collect ransomware payments. The main reason: it’s easily decryptable.

But just because it isn’t perceived as a serious threat from a financial perspective, it doesn’t mean it’s harmless. It’s loaded with features that can wreak havoc with computer systems. According to Bleeping computer, that includes  “terminating numerous security programs, disabling Windows Defender, turning off the firewall, encrypting your files, trying to spread through USB drives, making it so you can’t run a variety of programs, and then to sweeten the pot, it overwrites the master boot record of the infected computer with a silly boot loader.”

Read the full story at Bleeping Computer.