YUFL Ransomware

The YUFL Ransomware is a file-locking Trojan that's part of Dharma Ransomware's business, a Ransomware-as-a-Service. Threat actors may deploy this Trojan against servers or home computers for blocking their files with secure encryption. Users with backups experience minimal disruption from this Trojan, and most PC security products should remove the YUFL Ransomware.

Digital Media Pirates Just in Time for Halloween

Flying under the old banner of the skull and crossbones, the Dharma Ransomware and its readily-identifiable ransom notes maintain high activity throughout the year. With numerous Windows variants like the bH4T Ransomware, the LCK Ransomware, the Gtsc Ransomware, or the Eur Ransomware, these campaigns may change their names but stay equally-capable of locking files and, for unprepared victims, making money out of it. The YUFL Ransomware, like its fellows, is the internet era's digital equivalent of a pirate – although it concerns itself with sabotage and extortion instead of collecting valuables.

The YUFL Ransomware's installation includes additional Registry changes that let the Trojan maintain system persistence after infecting the PC through e-mail attachments, torrents or other exploits. Malware experts always rate the YUFL Ransomware's family's data encryption feature as the chief concern, blocking files of significant media formats like documents. Secondarily, the Trojan also deletes Restore Point backups through the Windows CMD utility.

File-locker Trojans from this family also include a campaign-specific extension-adding feature for each file, but removing this extension doesn't change the encryption responsible for the data lock. According to the Dharma Ransomware templates, victims also may find TXT and HTA files that sell the threat actor's premium data restoration solution. There always are risks in paying these ransoms, and malware experts recommend having offsite backups as the best solution for users with valuable or irreplaceable files.

Sailing the Online Seas without Trojan Encounters

Threat actors that avail themselves of Ransomware-as-a-Services have many techniques for Trojan distribution at their disposal. However, users can guard against all of them to various degrees. Preventing infection, besides having unharmed backups, is the only means of guaranteeing the safety of documents, pictures, and other files that the YUFL Ransomware might attack. For doing so, malware experts recommend all of the following:

• Using strong passwords that prevent brute-force attacks
• Limiting admin privileges to necessary accounts
• Disabling public internet-available RDP features
• Disabling 'advanced content' and macros in documents and spreadsheets
• Installing security patches for all software
• Avoiding illicit downloadable content
• Turning off browser features at risk of exploitation like Flash and JavaScript

Together, these steps can make most PCs impenetrable to the typical strategies of file-locker Trojans' campaigns. Cyber-security products can further detect threats as they slip through and will immediately remove the YUFL Ransomware.

Seafaring pirates could occupy an over-sized space in the public imagination. Compared to threats like the YUFL Ransomware, which make money far more effortlessly off of the simplest abuses of media that everyone uses, piracy is far less of a problem to today's Web surfers than Trojans.