Zero-Fucks Ransomware

The Zero-Fucks Ransomware is a file-locking Trojan that can block your media and display pop-ups with ransom demands. Keeping your work backed up to another device will help with restoration and is the suggested recovery alternative to submitting to the extortion. Anti-malware products of most brands should remove the Zero-Fucks Ransomware before it harms any of the files on your computer.

A Trojan that Wants More than Zero from You

Catches of a new, file-locking Trojan for Windows show the possibility of a threat actor's experimenting with an independently-developed program for extortionist crimes. The Zero-Fucks Ransomware bears some similarity to early versions of the Crysis Ransomware, the Jigsaw Ransomware, et al., but is an in-development project with bugs and an incomplete payload. For now, malware experts, still, advise treating it as no different from an active and functional Trojan.

The early versions of the Zero-Fucks Ransomware that malware analysts can confirm are Windows executables with missing encryption or file-locking behavior. However, the Zero-Fucks Ransomware does boast one of the other hallmarks of file-locker Trojans everywhere: ransom notes. It generates a pop-up in an HTA, or advanced Web page format, and a complementing Notepad message with a copy of the criminal's Bitcoin wallet address. The pop-up contains other elements that are typical of many of the less-professional versions of Ransomware-as-a-Service products, such as a timer, a ransom price that rises over time, and various, generic graphical elements.

A significant limitation in the Zero-Fucks Ransomware is that it doesn't give the victims any contact information, only the wallet. Accordingly, paying users have no way of getting their decryptor – at least, under present circumstances. The use of a user ID does, however, imply that the Zero-Fucks Ransomware's creator plans on implementing a robust 'client' management system, in the future.

Giving Less than Zero about the Next File-Locker Trojan

The most investment the Zero-Fucks Ransomware's author is placing into his or her Trojan is in its use of social engineering, which emphasizes haste, in fear of missing the 'best price' for the decryptor. Since, however, there's no guarantee of the user getting any decryption help, at all, malware experts always recommend against paying. The use of Bitcoins places further vulnerability on any victims since it provides a cash-transferral avenue without appropriate refunding protections.

Current samples of the Zero-Fucks Ransomware include glitches that throw visible error messages or crash the program. Users should, despite these issues, assume that this Trojan is capable of harming their documents and other media. Saving one's work to another device will help with recovery without requiring decryption, premium, or otherwise.

Fortunately, most anti-malware programs will detect the Zero-Fucks Ransomware, with the majority's identifying it through generic heuristics. Use these programs for protecting your PC and deleting the Zero-Fucks Ransomware before encryption damages can happen in the first place.

The early phases of the Zero-Fucks Ransomware include few dangers for any unlucky infectees. That doesn't mean that the file-locking Trojan always will be just as crippled when encryption is easily programmable by even the most incompetent of 'script kiddies.'