CrY-TrOwX Ransomware

Posted: December 15, 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:	184
Threat Level:	2/10
Infected PCs:	45,931

First Seen:	September 26, 2022
Last Seen:	October 17, 2023
OS(es) Affected:	Windows

The CrY-TrOwX Ransomware is a variant of Hidden Tear that can block media on your computer by encrypting the files with a cipher, such as the AES-128. After the Trojan locks your data, it can create other symptoms, such as changes to their extensions, making Notepad ransom messages, or resetting your wallpaper to one of its internal images.

A Trojan Hoping to Give You Something to Cry Over

Although brand naming is vital to the threatening software industry, it isn't always consistent between 'products.' Not every Trojan using the term 'Cry' is a member of the WannaCryptor Ransomware family, although, in the case of the CrY-TrOwX Ransomware, the resemblance may be coincidental. This version of Hidden Tear is the project of a new threat actor, 'Ismail,' and its new features use very simple and substandard, but still fully functional code.

Although the CrY-TrOwX Ransomware notifies Ismail by e-mail of a new infection, it isn't dependent on this network communicating for its other attacks, which include locking media and creating limited ransoming messages for the victim to read. A full description of the most significant impact of the CrY-TrOwX Ransomware's payload comprises:

Like any version of Hidden Tear, the CrY-TrOwX Ransomware searches the PC for specific formats of data to block it with encryption automatically. Although the attack leaves no initial symptoms, afterward, the user can't open the affected file, which also will have the '.locked' extension in its name.
The CrY-TrOwX Ransomware also displays two ransoming messages: a dynamically-generated Notepad file that it drops on the PC, and an image that it sets as the desktop's wallpaper. Both notes use the same instructions that give no information besides telling the user to contact Ismail's e-mail for restoring their media.

For now, the threat actor isn't providing any details on the cost of the decryptor for unlocking any files. However, malware experts rarely see ransoms of this nature not employing some form of protection against refunds, which means that the victims undertake any payments at a high risk of not getting the decryption solution.

A Shut Off Valve for Trojan Waterworks

The damages from the CrY-TrOwX Ransomware infections are very likely of harming popular-use formats of media, such as Microsoft Office output, Adobe's PDF documents, or images like JPG, BMP and GIF. Since malware experts have yet to denote a free decryption solution compatible with this variant of Hidden Tear, victims may wish to provide samples of the CrY-TrOwX Ransomware and any encrypted content to interested and reputable cyber-security researchers.

The CrY-TrOwX Ransomware's ransoming components are in English, but this language choice may be for helping the Trojan be as flexible as possible with its distribution exploits. Less professional variants of file-locking Trojans, similar to the CrY-TrOwX Ransomware, are sometimes found installing themselves through fake software updates or torrents naming themselves after piracy-related content. More commonly, threat actors could install the Trojan from an e-mail spamming campaign that uses corrupted attachments. In most cases, your anti-malware programs can detect and quarantine or delete the CrY-TrOwX Ransomware without letting any damage occur.

File-locking Trojans only can block content that they have access to, in the first place. Any user who isn't making backups of their work should consider doing so seriously, in the face of regularly-appearing extortionists like the CrY-TrOwX Ransomware.

Technical Details

Additional Information

The following URL's were detected:

pornone.com