MilkmanVictory Ransomware

The MilkmanVictory Ransomware is a file-locking Trojan based on Hidden Tear. Although the Trojan's campaign is targeting supposed loan con artists, its payload is threatening to all Windows users' data equally and can prevent media from opening indefinitely. Users can recover with backups or free decryption services after removing the MilkmanVictory Ransomware through a trusted anti-malware product.

Spilling Sour Milk All over Your Company's Data

Nearly all file-locking Trojans have origin stories rooted in the selfish desire of making money, but exceptions always exist in a vast and diverse threat landscape. The MilkmanVictory Ransomware, another version of Hidden Tear (for contrast, see the CyberThanos Ransomware, the DRV Ransomware, the Israbye Ransomware or the Russian Legion Ransomware) is just such a different example. Its 'ransom note' asks for no money, and its threat actor is claiming to operate with justice-oriented vigilante motivations.

The MilkmanVictory Ransomware's administrators are a group of hackers calling themselves CyberWare. The threat actor is targeting companies that they claim are engaged in fraudulent loaning activities with traditional e-mail attachment-based infection vectors. The attached EXE, a fake PDF document, facilitates the installation of the MilkmanVictory Ransomware, which disrupts the business's Windows systems with a Hidden Tear-derived, file-encrypting routine. Simultaneously, CyberWare also launches Denial-of-Service or DDoS attacks using an unknown botnet, which crashes the target's servers.

The MilkmanVictory Ransomware's lack of demand for money is one of its odder traits, which malware researchers find in finalized, file-locker Trojans rarely. Although it leaves a text message, the note leaves little information other than its name and a 'scammer' accusation. A second and more critical oddity is that the MilkmanVictory Ransomware doesn't save the key for decrypting the victim's media, which closes off the standard solution of begging the hacker for their decryption aid.

Turning the Milkman Away at the Door

CyberWare's pretensions of serving out vigilante justice are, unfortunately, just another way for innocents to come to harm, regardless. The MilkmanVictory Ransomware, like most of the Hidden Tear spinoffs, threatens documents, pictures, music, and other media on anyone's Windows PC, whether or not they're con artists. There is, thankfully, a free decryption service for Hidden Tear's family, although malware experts discourage dependency on decryptors as total substitutes for comprehensive backups.

Additionally, while the MilkmanVictory Ransomware is an individualistic Trojan in some ways, in others, it resembles the 'for-profit' Trojan industry strongly. The use of phishing e-mails with target-customized information for tricking victims into opening a harmful attachment is highly typical of both various file-locker Trojans' assaults and backdoor Trojan-based reconnaissance campaigns. Users should remain highly careful about which files they open, and monitor filenames' extensions, in-document macros and similar flags appropriately.

Windows-based anti-malware applications should remove the MilkmanVictory Ransomware without issues due to its basis as a variant of a Trojan project with little in the way of aggressive self-defense or code obfuscation.

The MilkmanVictory Ransomware delivers a moral victory to its operators, but only for so long. Committing a crime in response to suspected criminal activity may or may not provide justice in the long run. Still, it's leading to little that's good for the MilkmanVictory Ransomware's CyberWare team almost certainly.