Researcher cracks Akira ransomware, offers decryption tool
A researcher has successfully cracked the Akira ransomware encryptor for Linux, creating a brute-force decryption tool. This tool, developed using cloud computing power, is now available on GitHub. The researcher, Yohanes Nugroho, used 16 RTX 4090 GPUs to decrypt files, completing the process in about 10 hours. The total cost was $1,200, taking three weeks to finish. Akira generates unique encryption keys for each file using timestamps. Nugroho's method allows victims to recover their files at a lower cost than paying the ransom.