Shadow Ransomware

Posted: December 5, 2017

Threat Metric

The Threat Meter is a malware assessment that SpywareRemove.com's research team is able to give every identifiable malware threat. Our Threat Meter includes several criteria based off of specific malware threats to value their severity, reach and volume. The Threat Meter is able to give you a numerical breakdown of each threat's initial Threat Level, Detection Count, Volume Count, Trend Path and Percentage Impact. The overall ranking of each threat in the Threat Meter is a basic breakdown of how all threats are ranked within our own extensive malware database. The scoring for each specific malware threat can be easily compared to other emerging threats to draw a contrast in its particular severity. The Threat Meter is a useful tool in the endeavor of seeking a solution to remove a threat or pursue additional analytical research for all types of computer users.

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:	12,688
Threat Level:	2/10
Infected PCs:	33

First Seen:	May 5, 2022
Last Seen:	October 14, 2023
OS(es) Affected:	Windows

The group of cybercrooks behind the BTCWare Ransomware seems to be active again, since a significant number of users were infected by what appears to be a new variant of BTCWare that has been dubbed the Shadow Ransomware by anti-virus product vendors. The new variant does not seem to include any major improvements or new features and, instead, the only notable changes concern the file extension used to mark locked files, as well as the e-mail address that the attackers use to get in touch with their victims. Just like previous variants such as the Nuclear Ransomware and the Aleta Ransomware, this one also relies on spam e-mails as its primary infection vector.

Once deployed to a computer, the Shadow Ransomware will carry out a list of tasks whose purpose is to prevent the victim from accessing the majority of their files silently, as well as to delete Shadow Volume Copies that might be used to restore at least a fraction of the encrypted data. In addition to this, the Shadow Ransomware is capable of disabling important Windows services that also may give users the opportunity to revert the damage done to their files. Naturally, the Shadow Ransomware's attack is carried out silently, in a background process. This ensures that victims will not notice anything suspicious until it is too late for them to stop the file-encryption operation. All files that the Shadow Ransomware takes hostage will have the '.[paydayz@cock.li]-id-[VICTIM ID].shadow' extension added to their names.

The ransom note uses a design similar to the one used by the Globe Ransomware, but this is the only common thing between these two threats. The note is found in '!! RETURN FILES !!.txt,' as well as in a new window titled 'paydayz@cock.li.' The attackers don't tell the exact amount of money they demand, but they do confirm that they want to receive the money via a Bitcoin transaction. They also offer to decrypt up to three files or free as proof that they are in possession of a working decryption tool. We advise victims to take advantage of this offer, but they should not agree to pay money to the perpetrators. If your data was taken hostage by the Shadow Ransomware, then we advise you to run an anti-malware utility immediately, which can help eliminate the threatening application. Unfortunately, the recovery of the encrypted data is a tricky task since the Shadow Ransomware makes it incredibly difficult to recover any files via free tools and techniques. The only surefire way to restore data encrypted by the Shadow Ransomware is to use a reliable backup that was not harmed during the attack.

Shadow Ransomware

Threat Metric

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