High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Cryptovirology is a field that studies how to use cryptography to design powerful malicious software. The field was born with the observation that public-key cryptography can be used to break the symmetry between what an antivirus analyst sees regarding a virus and what the virus writer sees. The former only sees a public key whereas the latter sees a public key and corresponding private key. The first attack that was identified in the field is called "cryptoviral extortion". In this attack a virus, worm, or trojan hybrid encrypts the victim's files and the user must pay the malware author to receive the needed session key (which is encrypted under the author's public key that is contained in the malware) if the user does not have backups and needs the files back. Данное издание представляет собой компиляцию сведений, находящихся в свободном доступе в среде Интернет в целом, и в информационном сетевом ресурсе "Википедия" в частности....