Love2Lock Ransomware

Posted: February 3, 2017

Threat Metric

The Threat Meter is a malware assessment that SpywareRemove.com's research team is able to give every identifiable malware threat. Our Threat Meter includes several criteria based off of specific malware threats to value their severity, reach and volume. The Threat Meter is able to give you a numerical breakdown of each threat's initial Threat Level, Detection Count, Volume Count, Trend Path and Percentage Impact. The overall ranking of each threat in the Threat Meter is a basic breakdown of how all threats are ranked within our own extensive malware database. The scoring for each specific malware threat can be easily compared to other emerging threats to draw a contrast in its particular severity. The Threat Meter is a useful tool in the endeavor of seeking a solution to remove a threat or pursue additional analytical research for all types of computer users.

The following fields listed on the Threat Meter containing a specific value, are explained in detail below:

Threat Level: The threat level scale goes from 1 to 10 where 10 is the highest level of severity and 1 is the lowest level of severity. Each specific level is relative to the threat's consistent assessed behaviors collected from SpyHunter's risk assessment model.

Detection Count: The collective number of confirmed and suspected cases of a particular malware threat. The detection count is calculated from infected PCs retrieved from diagnostic and scan log reports generated by SpyHunter.

Volume Count: Similar to the detection count, the Volume Count is specifically based on the number of confirmed and suspected threats infecting systems on a daily basis. High volume counts usually represent a popular threat but may or may not have infected a large number of systems. High detection count threats could lay dormant and have a low volume count. Criteria for Volume Count is relative to a daily detection count.

Trend Path: The Trend Path, utilizing an up arrow, down arrow or equal symbol, represents the level of recent movement of a particular threat. Up arrows represent an increase, down arrows represent a decline and the equal symbol represent no change to a threat's recent movement.

% Impact (Last 7 Days): This demonstrates a 7-day period change in the frequency of a malware threat infecting PCs. The percentage impact correlates directly to the current Trend Path to determine a rise or decline in the percentage.

Ranking:	5,929
Threat Level:	8/10
Infected PCs:	1,703

First Seen:	February 3, 2017
Last Seen:	October 11, 2023
OS(es) Affected:	Windows

The Love2Lock Ransomware is a Trojan that may block your files by encrypting them or modifying their names, including their extensions. After a successful attack, the Love2Lock Ransomware launches a pop-up requesting money to be transferred to a Bitcoin wallet address for recovering your files. The questionable reliability of such a recovery method forces malware experts to always recommend backing up content that you can't afford to lose, and use anti-malware products to block or delete the Love2Lock Ransomware automatically.

A Trojan that's in Love with Your Files

Threat actors are persisting in creating new Trojans to launch previously-established payloads for profit, either to update their payment mechanisms or to stop old security solutions from being effective. The Love2Lock Ransomware is an example of such a campaign under a recent release, which con artists can use for locking the files of either business servers or recreational PCs equally quickly. Signs of this threat's presence, as always, are limited until after the attack triggers, making a recovery afterward difficult.

The Love2Lock Ransomware may be being installed through e-mail attachments, 'brute force' attacks against RDP networks, or even bundled into other downloads, such as torrents. With system access, the Love2Lock Ransomware enumerates your hard drives to scan for encryption-suitable content (examples include spreadsheets, pictures and documents). The Trojan also generates an ID number that malware experts are estimating as custom to each infection. Before opening its ransom message, the Love2Lock Ransomware transfers the key for decrypting and restoring your files to a con artist's Command & Control server.

The Love2Lock Ransomware's pop-up message asks for a Bitcoin transfer before giving you the code for unlocking your encoded data. Since the victim can't cancel the payment after the fact, the threat actor could withhold the decryption assistance without any penalties to his source of revenue.

Keeping the Wrong Kind of Love out of Your Life

By design, any symptoms of the Love2Lock Ransomware infections are minor until after the Trojan has been able to lock your files. Preventing this threat's installation can include scanning newly-downloaded files with an anti-malware utility, blocking corrupted URLs by default, disabling scripts in your browser, and using appropriately secure password protection for all network logins. There are no known free decryptors for the Love2Lock Ransomware, but victims may wish to offer samples to third parties in the cyber security industry to assist with the development of such software.

Paying ransoms for decoding your files is, at best, an unsure recovery strategy that can waste your money without recovering any of your locked data. However, while the Love2Lock Ransomware may erase local backup data, most file-encrypting Trojans don't target cloud backup storage. Malware experts also recommend on saving backups to removable devices, as another defense for incidents where your anti-malware protection doesn't remove the Love2Lock Ransomware immediately.

The ever-changing and frequently-updating nature of the black market for file-encryptor Trojans turns threats like the Love2Lock Ransomware into all-too-familiar sights. Hesitating about taking core security steps or copying your data is an expensive mistake that more industrious threat actors are liable to exploit.