QkG Ransomware

Posted: November 23, 2017

Threat Metric

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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:	8/10
Infected PCs:	38

First Seen:	January 29, 2022
Last Seen:	January 29, 2022
OS(es) Affected:	Windows

The QkG Ransomware is a file-locking Trojan that encrypts the documents on infected PCs with a XOR-based cipher so that it can ransom an unlocking solution to its victims. This Trojan also has the unusual, extra feature of self-replicating through a macro exploit using Word. Compromised users avoid any use of the Microsoft's Word program until after deleting the QkG Ransomware with an anti-malware product, after which they can employ free data recovery solutions.

A Trojan that's Intent on Getting the Last 'Word' on Your Files

The days of viruses and worms spreading fears of self-reproducing threats aren't over, which a brand-new Trojan's upcoming campaign is about to demonstrate. This file-locking Trojan, the QkG Ransomware, marries modern-day, encryption-based attacks to an old-fashioned way of contaminating different files on your PC and protecting its longevity. Malware experts are suspecting that the Trojan is aiming for extorting money from English-speaking users, although its apparent author is Vietnamese.

Instead of being a typical Windows executable application, the QkG Ransomware is an entirely Microsoft Word-based threat. It compartmentalizes its code within a corrupted, document-embedded macro that runs whenever the victim closes an infected file, which triggers several attacks simultaneously. This strategy is only mildly similar to some infection vectors that malware experts sometimes see with Trojans like the '.locky File Extension' Ransomware, which uses macros for its installation (but not the rest of its payload) occasionally.

Users who open a compromised document, enable the QkG Ransomware's macro, and close it will trigger the following features:

The QkG Ransomware uses an XOR algorithm to encrypt the just-closed file, which keeps other programs from being able to interpret the contents correctly. It doesn't change the name of the file, unlike most file-locking Trojans.
The QkG Ransomware appends a legible, 'ransom note' style message to the end of the encoded document. This message includes details for paying the Trojan's author to unlock your files, including credentials such as the ID number and Bitcoin wallet address.
The Trojan also disables some Word-centric security features so that future instances of the QkG Ransomware can run without requiring the user to enable the macro manually.
Lastly, the QkG Ransomware also compromises Word's default 'normal.dot' template This change causes the Trojan to infect any other file that the victim opens in that copy of Word and trigger the other three attacks.

Quarantining a Document-Based Disease

While malware researchers don't see the QkG Ransomware in the wild, the Trojan's development is extremely active and is cycling through a variety of variants and features. Current versions of the QkG Ransomware's XOR cipher are encoded and not secure, and victims can retrieve any locked documents with the free decryption assistance of professional AV researchers. Backing up your media, especially Word-related work, may be the only means of restoring your files from future releases of the QkG Ransomware.

The initial act of opening a compromised file does require the user's intentional enabling of macro-based content, which malware experts note as being an infection vector and general security hazard repeatedly. This caveat doesn't apply to anything that the victim opens after the QkG Ransomware hijacks Word's template and security settings, and reinstalling Word is advisable for your PC's safety. Anti-malware programs should detect and delete the QkG Ransomware at a rate that's comparable to those of other, file-locking threats.

What one threat actor uses in a corrupted code often finds a way of spreading to other attacks. The risks of relying too much on a single brand of software are more than visible with Trojans like the QkG Ransomware opening new avenues to extortion.