Meteoritan Ransomware

The Meteoritan Ransomware is a Trojan that threatens to lock your files by encrypting them with an unbreakable RSA algorithm. Current versions of the Meteoritan Ransomware don't include an actual encryption attack, although they may make other changes to your files such as overwriting their extensions. Since there are no advantages to submitting to any of the Meteoritan Ransomware's demands, malware experts recommend disregarding its attempted extortion and using anti-malware utilities to remove the Meteoritan Ransomware for free.

A Hopeful Extortionist Trojan Flying Straight to Poland

At least some threat actors still are considering Europe a resource worth plundering, one victim at a time, without any indications of favoring the business server-targeting campaigns of other file-encrypting threat authors. Although the Meteoritan Ransomware uses English-based resources, its statistics, so far, correlate with attempts at compromising Polish systems randomly. It uses a very basic key-generating technique and lacks some essential attack functions, and malware experts rate the Trojan for being highly likely as still in its early development stages.

The Meteoritan Ransomware creates an (apparently not used) key through a C++ randomization function. It doesn't use any protective encoding on this key, which could help the victims retrieve it, if necessary, in its future attacks. Since the available releases of the Meteoritan Ransomware don't encrypt or otherwise lock any of the infected PC's files, they don't need to take any particular steps for recovering the same data that the Meteoritan Ransomware is trying to ransom.

The Meteoritan Ransomware still drops a ransoming message, typical to most file-encrypting Trojans, onto your PC. This text file tells the user to transfer Bitcoins to the threat actor's wallet to receive the file-unlocking decryption key. The Trojan also includes other, unsubstantiated threats regarding the automatic deletion of its uploaded key within a time limit, along with claiming that terminating the program will cause permanent file damage. Malware experts can see no evidence verifying these claims or the rest of the ransom note's contents, which the threat actors misappropriated from another campaign.

Keeping the Skies Clear of Ransoming Bluffs

In its current iteration, the Meteoritan Ransomware is a low-level threat that lacks most of the attacks that real file-encoding Trojans are known for leveraging. However, the limits of its payload and lack of common defensive techniques, like any form of code packing, could help it slip through standard anti-malware defenses. Keeping the threat databases of your anti-malware products updated will reduce false positives and other detection inaccuracies.

The Meteoritan Ransomware may arrive through a spam e-mail message, a document-embedded macro, a website's exploit scripts, or even a mislabeled, consensual download. While malware experts consider the Meteoritan Ransomware unlikely of seeing any use against high-profit business networks, the actions of independent threat actors remain unpredictable. Having a backup also may be needed for resolving future Meteoritan Ransomware infections that include updates like a meaningful data-enciphering attack.

PC users removing the Meteoritan Ransomware in its current version are somewhat lucky that they're paying a small price for their security indiscretions. For most Trojans using the messages of threats like the Meteoritan Ransomware, the cost of recovering is much more expensive.