'.VforVendetta File Extension' Ransomware

The '.VforVendetta File Extension' Ransomware is a Trojan that holds your files hostage by encoding them with a cipher and selling you the decryption key. Buying decryption help from threat actors often backfires on the victims of these attacks, and malware experts emphasize the much greater reliability of using backups for recovering any data. Standard anti-malware solutions can both protect your PC from this threat or remove the '.VforVendetta File Extension' Ransomware after it's already begun attacking the system.

A Not-Very-Masked Assassin after Your Files

Favorite media products continue being a major thematic tie-in of new Trojan campaigns with the '.VforVendetta File Extension' Ransomware, a recent threat using file encryption for locking its victims out of their data. Although malware researchers have been unable to confirm whether or not the '.VforVendetta File Extension' Ransomware has relationships with previous families of threats, its threat actors appear to possess some degree of experience. Their ransom-collecting infrastructure offers victims an 'easy' way to pay for data recovery while also protecting the con artists from any consequences of the transactions.

Perhaps chosen for its potential relevance to the British EU exiting (AKA 'Brexit') or the recent US presidential election, the '.VforVendetta File Extension' Ransomware incorporates references to the political thriller 'V for Vendetta' movie and graphic novel in its attacks. Any local data that it encodes also receives the '.VforVendetta' extension at the end of its name. However, malware experts express more concern with its encoding attack that uses an encryption algorithm for blocking the affected content, regardless of the name. Once locked, the file is no longer accessible without being decrypted, which may be impossible without help from the '.VforVendetta File Extension' Ransomware's threat actors.

You may find some additional information about the effects of the '.VforVendetta File Extension' Ransomware's payload contained in its ransom note, which it generates in an HTML Web pop-up format. These notes redirect you to a TOR-protected ransoming process where victims are asked to pay money, traditionally cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, in return for a decryption code.

A Timely Revolution against File Encrypting Trojans

The '.VforVendetta File Extension' Ransomware's website format tries to draw attention to the relative simplicity of paying a ransom to get your files decrypted and restored. While con artists benefit from this arrangement by using anonymity-protecting site infrastructures and payment mechanisms that avoid chargebacks, victims risk their money upfront for the possibility of getting nothing. Arguably, this risk is even greater than normal with new Trojans like the '.VforVendetta File Extension' Ransomware that lack the reputations that some threat actors cultivate for providing decryption assistance in a timely fashion.

Early samples of the '.VforVendetta File Extension' Ransomware indicate that the Trojan may be disguising part of its installation mechanism as a Microsoft Office document. This possibility raises the chances of the threat abusing e-mail-based infection vectors. Potential victims can scan any incoming attachments with anti-malware utilities and remove the '.VforVendetta File Extension' Ransomware before it has the chance to encode their files. Otherwise, restoring from a backup may be the only free recovery choice.

As Web surfing activity climbs with the incoming holidays, Web surfers should remember that opening files with unconfirmed identities carelessly is more than just a bad idea: it's a potential loophole for letting Trojans like the '.VforVendetta File Extension' Ransomware take all your files.