GoldenAxe Ransomware

The GoldenAxe Ransomware is a file-locking Trojan without a known family. The GoldenAxe Ransomware can block your documents and other media with AES encryption, add extensions to their names, create ransoming notes in multiple formats, and play warning sounds. Users may require backups for recovering any files but can depend on conventional anti-malware services for removing the GoldenAxe Ransomware appropriately.

The Axe that's Swinging Down on Your Data

A file-locker Trojan is circulating by pretending that it's an update for Adobe's Flash, which makes a good, general-purpose disguise for random distribution through corrupted advertisements and other, browser-based attacks. The GoldenAxe Ransomware, unlike most Trojans of this payload type, is not an immediately-obvious update of Hidden Tear or a Ransomware-as-a-Service creation like the Dharma Ransomware. The threat does employ similar attacks, however, that encrypt media files and delivers unmistakable ransoming demands for the cure.

The GoldenAxe Ransomware, whose name may be a reference to a video game franchise of several decades ago, tricks the victim into opening its executable with the Flash-based name and begins encrypting files afterward. Malware experts are confirming the usual assortment of PDFs, JPGs, DOCs, XLSX spreadsheets and other media as being the targets of the GoldenAxe Ransomware's data-locking feature. Then, the GoldenAxe Ransomware gives all of them a secondary extension, 'UIK1J,' without removing their originals.

The GoldenAxe Ransomware places a JPG ransom note in the same folder as these blocked media files (which it may, in later builds, add to the desktop's wallpaper), as well as another set of instructions using Notepad. More innovatively, one of its last functions involves calling a text-to-speech feature for delivering a demand for the user's reading these warning messages. Besides the threat actor's giving one sample of the decryptor, malware experts have little information on the ransoming details for the unlocking service that recovers the media.

Sending 'Flash' Trojans Out in a Flash

Most PC security solutions will identify and blacklist unsafe domains, block compromised ad networks abusing software vulnerabilities, and deliver warnings before users download potentially-hostile files, such as fake patches and updates. Users can, additionally, help with protecting their PCs by refusing any updates that aren't from legitimate sources like Adobe.com. By the time the GoldenAxe Ransomware's symptoms appear, the file damage is inflicted and may not be curable with a direct decryption fix.

Some of the extra security steps that most users will benefit from using include disabling Flash, Java, and JavaScript in their Web browsers, updating all software regularly, and being careful about all interactions with possible infection paths, like e-mail attachments that are claiming that they're legal or financial documents. The GoldenAxe Ransomware is a Windows program and shows no particular protection against most security solutions in that environment. Fortunately, the majority of anti-malware tools can delete the GoldenAxe Ransomware's installer before any harm occurs to your files.

There's no telling what the GoldenAxe Ransomware's price is for its unlocker, and such a solution may not do anything for the files once the encryption is in place. Care about where you get your updates, and saving files to more than one place, will keep your work out of the GoldenAxe Ransomware's hostage-taking plans.