Satan666 Ransomware

The Satan666 Ransomware is a Trojan that encodes your files with a cipher so that it can sell its victims a decryption service. These encryption attacks are not always reversible, and con artists often refuse to give any assistance after taking their money, which makes keeping backups critical for limiting an infection's consequences. Your anti-malware programs also may identify and delete the Satan666 Ransomware without letting its file-encrypting payload trigger.

The Devil is a Copycat for Christmas

The power of a brand is a social engineering tool that con artists know just as well as businesspeople and is a form of manipulation malware experts see in new threat campaigns repeatedly. Although some Trojans use brands with themes meant to evoke fear of infamous organizations, such as Anonymous, others, like the Satan666 Ransomware, ride on the hard-earned reputations of other Trojans. The Satan666 Ransomware's initial symptoms are meant to imply that the Trojan is a member of the a href="/removelockyfileextensionransomware.html" title="Remove locky File Extension Ransomware">'.locky File Extension' Ransomware family, but the two threats are unrelated to each other.

The Satan666 Ransomware scans for files either according to their formats (such as DOC or TXT) or locations (such as your Windows default Downloads) and encrypts them with an algorithm malware researchers still are identifying. The Trojan also adds the '.locked' extension to the encrypted content, in a clear imitation of the previously-mentioned family. With the encryption cipher blocking your content, the Trojan creates extortion messages conveyed through desktop images (the Satan666 Ransomware does not use the traditional image associated with the '.locky File Extension' Ransomware) and Notepad text.

Victims have the option of contacting one of several e-mail addresses for inquiries on how to purchase the decryption key and recover their blocked content. The inclusion of additional, backup addresses could be indications of the threat actors being unable to maintain an address for a prolonged time frame or trying to avoid poor transaction histories connected to specific e-mails. While there are obvious risks to paying con artists for their help in reversing the file damage, there also are no third-party decryption possibilities for the Satan666 Ransomware.

The Cheapest Exorcism for Your Files

The frequency of new threats like the Satan666 Ransomware appearing increases the importance of protecting your data against encryption and other forms of damage, such as the backup-erasing techniques these threats commonly employ. While free decryption help is not available for every file-encrypting Trojan, malware experts find few of them capable of damaging backups saved on cloud servers. PC users uninterested in network-based backup options also may save backups to removable drives that can restore their data after they disinfect the system.

The Satan666 Ransomware's presence can cause other security issues in addition to locking your local content, such as providing a backdoor through which a threat actor may access your PC or disable security software. Trusted brands of anti-malware software should be capable of eliminating these vulnerabilities while uninstalling the Satan666 Ransomware. If the Trojan or other threats interfere with your accessibility to these solutions, consider restarting in Safe Mode before you scan the PC.

Taking the Satan666 Ransomware at its word can cause you to use improper decryption tools that may damage the encoded content even more than before unintentionally. Even during the holiday season, victims of threat attacks should consider the sources of their information before acting on any plans for saving their files from Satan's digital counterpart.