‘National Security Agency’ Ransomware
Posted: November 1, 2013
Threat Metric
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: | 2,995 |
---|---|
Threat Level: | 2/10 |
Infected PCs: | 35,391 |
First Seen: | November 1, 2013 |
---|---|
Last Seen: | October 16, 2023 |
OS(es) Affected: | Windows |
The 'National Security Agency' Ransomware displays fake warning messages that supposedly are authorized by the United States' NSA for blocking Windows and locking down your computer. As a PC threat that's similar to many variants of fake Police Trojans and fake FBI Trojans, the 'National Security Agency' Ransomware doesn't have any real government authority behind its attacks and may display its legal pop-up warnings even if your computer never has been used for any sort of criminal activity. The freeze the 'National Security Agency' Ransomware places on your PC is intended to bully you into paying a fake legal fine, but malware researchers recommend against giving in to this ransom demand and, instead, using good anti-malware tools and other strategies to remove the 'National Security Agency' Ransomware without any excessive charges.
When Your Personal Computer is a Matter of National Malware Attention
The 'National Security Agency' Ransomware isn't an actual program used by the NSA for penalizing cyber criminals, although its pop-up does its best to portray the 'National Security Agency' Ransomware as one. Rather, the 'National Security Agency' Ransomware is a Trojan that uses the common ploy of claiming that its victim has been involved in embarrassing crimes like viewing child pornography as an excuse to lock their computers and demand money in exchange for letting them have everything restored. Lending credence to the 'National Security Agency' Ransomware's hoax is its display of actual child pornography-related images combined with some stock legal text and basic information about your location (the latter of which is easily detectable by unsafe software that doesn't have access to any government databases).
Malware experts have seen similar tactics heavily involving the use of pornographic and corrupted
sites that redirect their traffic to the 'National Security Agency' Ransomware after surprising their victims with potentially illegal pornographic images. This provides the 'National Security Agency' Ransomware and similarly-themed PC threats with the perfect cover for their strategies, which can be launched automatically after a standard drive-by-download attack that installs the threat.
Of course, appropriate protections against these attacks are largely focused on your browser. Avoiding suspicious or outright threatening sites is one of the simplest defenses against a 'National Security Agency' Ransomware-installing exploit. Malware experts also warn that PCs with outdated software are significantly more vulnerable to drive-by-downloads, which often use out-of-date exploits that have been corrected by a variety of security patches. Last but not least, many anti-malware products are able to detect and block such attacks – either by the base website or by the exploits as their attacks are attempted.
Turning a Ransomware Trojan into Penniless Software
Even if you've made the right decision of avoiding paying the 'National Security Agency' Ransomware's ransom to remove its pop-up, the 'National Security Agency' Ransomware endangers your PC by preventing you from accessing other applications, including ones that are critical for your system security. Despite what the 'National Security Agency' Ransomware claims to be the best solution to its attack, malware researchers recommend an alternative way of removing the 'National Security Agency' Ransomware: disabling the 'National Security Agency' Ransomware by booting your PC through a peripheral device and then disinfecting your PC with whatever brand of anti-malware scanner you favor.
Since similar ransomware-based PC threats often include separate types of Trojans that assist them or have the ability to install new PC threats of different types, removing the 'National Security Agency' Ransomware is something that should be done at the first available point in time.
Leave a Reply
Please note that we are not able to assist with billing and support issues regarding SpyHunter or other products. If you're having issues with SpyHunter, please get in touch with SpyHunter customer support through your SpyHunter . If you have SpyHunter billing questions, we recommend you check the Billing FAQ. For general suggestions or feedback, contact us.