Luxnut Ransomware

Posted: June 7, 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.

Threat Level:	10/10
Infected PCs:	7

First Seen:	June 7, 2017
Last Seen:	September 10, 2021
OS(es) Affected:	Windows

The Luxnut Ransomware is a Trojan that blocks your files by encrypting them and holding them for ransom. Its attacks also can modify your desktop's appearance and edit filenames. Backups and free decryption programs both are valuable recovery options for unlocking your media. Otherwise, blocking infections by deleting the Luxnut Ransomware with protective anti-malware software can keep you from needing to restore anything.

When 'Terribly Wrong' Goes Deeper than Your Desktop

Since EDA2 is less heavily in use in the threat industry, it's sometimes forgotten about, compared to the Hidden Tear family created by the same Turkish programmer particularly. Sometimes, however, new versions of EDA2 do appear, such as the Luxnut Ransomware. Besides its file encryption, which one could consider as its 'main' attack, the Luxnut Ransomware's payload also boasts of an aesthetics-oriented hijacking feature for the Windows desktop, showing how Trojans are continuing to put effort into appearances.

The Luxnut Ransomware, which gets its name from its internal namespace declaration, is a Windows-based threat that shows few to no symptoms during the installation routine or its first attacks. The Trojan uses the AES enciphering methods to encrypt different file formats. The Luxnet Ransomware blocks up to twenty different types of content, of which malware experts emphasize DOC, TXT, XLS, PNG, JPG, ODT, and HTML as being some of the most prominent ones.

A Luxnut Ransomware's most differential symptom is the desktop-hijacking feature, which the Trojan uses for replacing the background image with a custom one of its own. The human evolution parody image and 'Something, somewhere went terribly wrong' caption provide no additional info on how to unlock your files, and the Luxnut Ransomware most likely creates a second file for showing its ransoming text.

Pruning Trojans Off of Software Evolutionary Tree

With some minor updates, even a Trojan built from a threat as completely examined as EDA2 can be a significant danger to your PC's files. Although free decryptors always are the stated recommendation of malware experts over paying con artists to unlock your files, decryption sometimes is unavailable. Remote backups can give additional leeway against the data loss that the Luxnut Ransomware can cause, even if the Trojan deletes local ones.

The Luxnut Ransomware shows symptoms similar to those of other EDA2 and Hidden Tear rehashes and reuses the '.locked' extension for naming the files it blocks. Let your anti-malware services identify and either quarantine or remove the Luxnut Ransomware, when necessary. The traditional proliferation strategies from file-encoding threats may include e-mail attachments or Web-browsing vulnerabilities, such as corrupted JavaScript or Flash content.

Smaller families of threatening software can offer just as many problems to PC owners and malware experts as larger ones. With a variety of designs comes an inherent flexibility of attacks and signatures. However, the Luxnut Ransomware's author has done little to upgrade the program for avoiding commonplace anti-malware protection.

Luxnut Ransomware

Threat Metric

When 'Terribly Wrong' Goes Deeper than Your Desktop

Pruning Trojans Off of Software Evolutionary Tree

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