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Princess Locker Ransomware

Posted: September 30, 2016

Threat Metric

Threat Level: 10/10
Infected PCs: 30
First Seen: September 30, 2016
OS(es) Affected: Windows

The 'Princess Locker' Ransomware is a Trojan that tries to encrypt your local data and displays messages recommending that you pay its con artist administrators for the decoding solution. Paying doesn't guarantee a successful file recovery, and malware analysts recommend attempting resolution options that don't reward illegal behavior, such as recovering through backups. This threat's infection routes may vary, but anti-malware protection should block and remove the 'Princess Locker' Ransomware before it can encrypt any files.

A Trojan's Apparent Promotion to Royalty

With many threat authors preferring to offload the 'work' of distributing threatening software and running active campaigns to third parties, corrupted file encryption, as a business, has become more streamlined than ever. This model makes it more challenging to predict the infection routes a Trojan might use, as well as identify what types of data and victims are targets. The 'Princess Locker' Ransomware is a new sample following this pattern, although malware experts have yet to confirm any public deployments.

The 'Princess Locker' Ransomware uses Web infrastructure elements nearly identical to that of the Cerber Ransomware's ransom process, giving rise to the theory that the same authors are responsible for both threats (or, at a minimum, are using shared HTML resources). Malware experts did verify that the 'Princess Locker' Ransomware uses legitimate encryption attacks, encoding individual files with an algorithm, essentially 'blocking' their further use. The victim can identify them by the randomly-generated extension added to each name.

The 'Princess Locker' Ransomware also creates an identification number for your machine that it embeds in its extortion message. The 'Princess Locker' Ransomware's authors use extortion templates emphasizing the TOR browser's anonymous website structure, and, like the Cerber Ransomware, provide a free, one file 'sample' of a decryption feature. Victims supposedly can pay a Bitcoin sum to use the same feature for decrypting the rest of their content, although malware analysts can't verify its functionality.

Taking the Sparkle of Profit out of a Threat's Tiara

Due to restricted sample availability, malware experts see no current decryptors confirmed for working on any content that the 'Princess Locker' Ransomware encodes. However, the PC security sector has provided a decryption application for the Cerber Ransomware. Offering samples of the 'Princess Locker' Ransomware or its encrypted content to appropriate security researchers can speed the developing of a decryption product that wouldn't require paying con artists.

Trojans like the 'Princess Locker' Ransomware are on offer under what's sometimes referred to as the RaaS (or Ransomware-as-a-Service) model. This model is known for having potentially unpredictable infection methods, although threat authors, to date, show preferences for using e-mail attachments or links, when practical. When your anti-malware products can't remove the 'Princess Locker' Ransomware before it attacks your PC or server's contents, you can use backups for recovering from the encryption without requiring a decryptor.

The current version of the 'Princess Locker' Ransomware demands an unusually high ransom (3 Bitcoins or more) and puts a time limit under any payments. However, submitting to this Trojan form of royalty may not recover your files and is no substitute for having high security.

Technical Details

File System Modifications

Tutorials: If you wish to learn how to remove malware components manually, you can read the tutorials on how to find malware, kill unwanted processes, remove malicious DLLs and delete other harmful files. Always be sure to back up your PC before making any changes.

The following files were created in the system:



RxWis.exe File name: RxWis.exe
Size: 525.31 KB (525312 bytes)
MD5: 14c32fd132942a0f3cc579adbd8a51ed
Detection count: 62
File type: Executable File
Mime Type: unknown/exe
Group: Malware file
Last Updated: November 9, 2016

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