In a first, a ransomware family is confirmed to be quantum-safe

A ransomware family called Kyber has become the first confirmed ransomware to use post-quantum cryptography (PQC). Security firm Rapid7 reverse-engineered the Windows variant and found it uses ML-KEM1024, the highest-strength version of NIST's post-quantum standard, to protect the AES-256 key used to encrypt victims' files. Both algorithms are quantum-resistant, though experts note there is currently no practical security benefit to using PQC in ransomware — the move appears to be primarily a marketing tactic to hype the strength of the encryption.