Cryptovirology

Cryptovirology is the art of turning the methods designed to protect your data into a means of subverting it. The combination of virus science and cryptography created Cryptovirology. Cryptovirology is a field that studies how to use cryptography to design powerful malicious software. Even though Cryptography is the science of keeping data secure it can be combined with virus science to make an effective tool for hacking once system.

Cryptovirology can be said as the ‘Dark side of cryptography’. The aim of cryptovirology is to improve resistance of viruses to analysis. In this case we can also speak of “cryptoviranalysis”. The basic of cryptovirology was the observation of breaking the symmetry between ‘antivirus analyst view’ and ‘virus creator’s view’ about Virus using public key cryptography.

Cryptoviranalysis includes the analysis of cryptographic algorithms used by malware writers, attacks on the algorithms using automated methods (such as X-raying) and analysis of viruses and packers encryptors.