Mancros+AI4939 Ransomware

The Mancros+AI4939 Ransomware is a Trojan that locks your screen and may take other actions, such as deleting or encrypting files, until you pay a Bitcoin ransom. Keeping backups on other PCs or removable devices can impede digital extortion attempts, and standard recovery protocols can avoid loading most screen-blocking attacks from Trojans of this caliber. Since it harms all access to your operating system's UI, malware experts advise using anti-malware software to block and remove the Mancros+AI4939 Ransomware before it can start attacking.

Extortionists Fumbling at Handing out Their Ransom Demands

Just like one can determine much of a person by talking to them, the words con artists use in the course of their misdeeds create an enlightening trail of clues to follow. Many threat actors do adhere to a bare minimum of professionalism or will misappropriate templates from those who do, but others, like the authors of the Mancros+AI4939 Ransomware, operate more casually than that. Ironically, the biggest failing of the Mancros+AI4939 Ransomware campaign may be that its messages impede its potential revenue.

Because of limited distribution, malware experts can't yet confirm whether the Mancros+AI4939 Ransomware includes most of the functions defining traditional ransomware-based Trojans, such as encoding the victim's files with a cipher like XOR or AES. However, the Trojan's payload does show one symptom common to threats of that type: a ransom note. Although the message's skull-based background art most likely is a preexisting work, its text seems to be unique to the Mancros+AI4939 Ransomware campaign, rather than a derivative of families like the Globe Ransomware or the Jigsaw Ransomware.

This extortion-themed message loads in a borderless window that purloins focus from other programs, preventing you from accessing either the desktop or other software. The Mancros+AI4939 Ransomware uses this unconventional pop-up for delivering a traditional request for Bitcoin payment before it begins to 'trash your computer' by deleting files. What makes the Mancros+AI4939 Ransomware unusual particularly, however, is that its authors don't include a wallet address for the transaction; instead, they include a so-called 'Bitcoin code' that malware analysts are unable to connect with any known format of cryptocurrency transfers.

Sending a Skull-Themed Trojan to the Graveyard

Besides its awkward payment details, the Mancros+AI4939 Ransomware also shows other signs of being an in-development project potentially, instead of a finished work in distribution against real targets actively. Numerous typos and overall poor formatting of its lock-screen message imply that either the Trojan is incomplete or its authors are non-English native speakers without much coding experience. Until more samples become available, malware analysts also are unable to verify whether or not the Mancros+AI4939 Ransomware can follow through on its warnings of damaging your PC or interfering with popular brands of PC security software.

Screen-locking threats do have negative security implications, on their own, however, although permanent damage to your PC is unlikely for users who remove the Mancros+AI4939 Ransomware through safe methods. Whenever trying to uninstall a threat that launches automatically, and for ones that attack other programs or core Windows features particularly, malware analysts recommend disabling them, first. Booting into Safe Mode in your native OS or using an emergency recovery device are two ways of bypassing such exploits, letting you remove the Mancros+AI4939 Ransomware with an anti-malware tool of your choice without endangering any other software.

While the Mancros+AI4939 Ransomware's authors may be left penniless, being unable to pay a ransom, arguably, is a gift in disguise. For many victims, paying the threat actor who's attacking their computers is a shortcut to poverty with no security or data recovery advantages, regardless of what Trojans like the Mancros+AI4939 Ransomware might say.