Damage Ransomware
Posted: February 22, 2017
Threat Metric
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: | 17,347 |
|---|---|
| Threat Level: | 8/10 |
| Infected PCs: | 234 |
| First Seen: | February 22, 2017 |
|---|---|
| Last Seen: | September 9, 2023 |
| OS(es) Affected: | Windows |
The Damage Ransomware is a Trojan that blocks your local data by encrypting it and asks you to negotiate for any file recovery through e-mail. Paying ransoms that a Trojan's threat actors request for their help may not give you a real decryption service and is inadvisable as anything but a last resort. Preferentially, you should block the Damage Ransomware's installation with anti-malware tools or recover any encoded files through your backups.
Trojans Being Literal with Their Name Tags
A Trojan that dates to February of 2017, the Damage Ransomware is a straightforward illustration of how threat actors use simple, memorable branding techniques to give their campaign an identity. While the Damage Ransomware implements most attacks similarly to other file-encrypting threats of this year, it also gives its victims specific visual indicators for finding out what damage it causes and how to respond to that fact. The aim of its author, as in most cases, seems to be collecting ransoms from the victims who no longer can open their files.
The Damage Ransomware's administrators are using the less-common exploit of hacking RDP-enabled PCs directly for installing the Trojan and any other threats, according to their discretion. Unsafe network port settings, poor firewall usage, and insecure passwords (simple strings with a limited use of alphanumeric characters) are the potential vulnerabilities empowering such attacks.
An initial analysis of the Damage Ransomware's payload by malware experts confirms these features:
- The Damage Ransomware encrypts documents, spreadsheets, and other media with an algorithm still under determination potentially, although it does appear to be using a custom key. The encryption algorithm makes any files the Damage Ransomware encodes unreadable for any applications compatible with them ordinarily.
- The Damage Ransomware also uses the extension '.damage' for flagging all of your locked media on an individual name basis. The format change is purely aesthetic and may or may not overwrite a previous extension.
- The Trojan also creates two text files named after the infected PC's user and the e-mail address of the Damage Ransomware's threat actor. The messages only ask you to contact the addresses for recovering your files without any explicit mention of a ransom currency or quantity. This omission is likely a social engineering strategy for gaining the victim's confidence before revealing the cost of any data recovery.
Damage Healing Versus Damage Prevention
The Damage Ransomware's installation methods favor targets that exercise bad network security practices, particularly for systems in the business sector that possess large databases of financially valuable information. Although the ransoms for decrypting your files may be as small as several hundred or as high as several thousand dollars, associated threat actors almost always use cash transfer methods that aren't subject to refunding. In their turn, the cyber security industry isn't always capable of providing a free decryption help. Backups still are the safest option for keeping the problems of a Damage Ransomware infection to a minimum.
Besides taking advantage of PC users who don't keep secure logins appropriately, the Damage Ransomware uses incorrect extensions for hiding its primary executable. Since its distribution entails manual intervention, any threat actors also may choose to install other threatening software alongside this Trojan. Disconnect the infected PC from the Internet before scanning your PC with anti-malware tools able to delete the Damage Ransomware, if not necessarily recover your locked files.
Thanks to the infection philosophy of its administrators, the Damage Ransomware's campaign has highly-restricted sample availability. Victims shouldn't expect a free decryptor to be available to protect them from the consequences of poor security decisions necessarily.