.katyusha ransomware - How to remove

Katyusha ransomware or .katyusha files virus is a ransomware infection that is capable of encrypting your personal files and forcing you to pay the ransom in order to receive unique decryption key that can be used to unlock those files. This kind of virus can completely paralyze your system, so it’s really important to get rid of Katyusha as soon as possible. Most of the anti-malware tools recognize this infection as a threat to your security, so it’s safe to save that Katyusha is a virus.

Unfortunately, removing such a virus can be a complicated task. Especially, if you have no previous experience in eliminating ransomware infections. In this article, we will try to assist you on removing .katyusha ransomware, so keep reading. However, it’s not enough to simply remove this virus from your computer, because it won’t solve the problem – encrypted files will remain locked.

We will try to help you ’restore. Also, it’s important to improve your computer security to ensure that this won’t happen again.

Katyusha analysis

So basically what’s going to happen if your computer will get infected with .katyusha ransomware – it will encrypt your personal files and display a ransom note with all information about the situation you are facing right now and instructions on what should you do next. The original ransom note of Katyusha goes like this:

=====================================HOW TO DECRYPT YOU FILES====================================

All your documents, photos, databases and other important personal files were encrypted!!
Please send 0.5 bitcoins to my wallet address: 3ALmvAWLEothnMF5BjckAFaKB5S6zan9PK
If you paid, send the ID and IDKEY to my email: [email protected]
I will give you the key and tool
If there is no payment within three days
we will no longer support decryption
If you exceed the payment time, your data will be open to the public download
We support decrypting the test file.
Send two small than 2 MB files to the email address: [email protected]

Your ID:85478336
Your IDKEY:
================================================================================
[REDACTED]

================================================================================

Payment site https://www.bithumb.com/
Payment site http://www.coinone.com/
Payment site https://www.gopax.co.kr/
Payment site http://www.localbitcoins.com/

Officail Mail:[email protected]

They use clever social engineering techniques and encourage users to send two encrypted files to them, so they can decrypt them and send back to you, building a trust this way. However, to get full access to all your files, you will have to pay 0,5 bitcoins. That’s a lot of money and totally not worth it – you can’t trust cyber criminals. Often times they simply ignore their victims after they transfer the money.

You will be also encouraged to contact them via [email protected] email, but you shouldn’t do that either.

The encryption process itself is pretty complicated, so it’s not that easy to reverse this process and decrypt locked files. Most probably the technology used to encrypt files is “borrowed” from other similar ransomware infections like District ransomware, EbolaRnsmwr virus, or Minotaur ransomware. However, not all things are the same and one of them is the extension which is added to the end of all encrypted files.

As you probably already know, .katyusha ransomware is capable of encrypting most of the personal files, such as videos, photos, text documents, and so on. Every encrypted file will feature .katyusha extension at the end. If you had a file named “picture.jpg”, now it will be “picture.jpg.katyusha”. It also means that you can’t open this file anymore because the structure of the file was changed using strong cryptography.

How Katyusha Virus Is Distributed

Various different techniques are employed by Katyusha virus to get malicious files on computers. It’s not very difficult to get a system infected with this virus – it’s enough to upload a payload file to the computer and it will automatically initiate the malicious process.

To get the payload into the system, cyber criminals usually attach it to spammy emails that were also crafted using social engineering techniques. They trick users into opening the file attached to the email and that’s it – the system is infected.

Actually, there isn’t much you can do about it once the process is started. Unless you have a professional anti-malware software actively operating on your computer. We highly recommend trying programs like IObit Malware Fighter or Plumbytes. They are free and can do a pretty good job stopping various infections that are threatening your system.

How To Eliminate .katyusha Ransomware

.katyusha ransomware can be easily removed if you just scan your computer with Spyhunter. Either one of those programs will automatically detect and remove .katyusha virus in no time. It won’t unlock your encrypted files, but you have to do it because if you try to decrypt your files when the virus itself is still on your computer, it will simply encrypt them once again.

Now, there are two ways to eliminate the damage done by .katyusha ransomware – files can be either restored or decrypted. Unfortunately, there is no free decryptor for this infection at the moment. so you don’t have the option to decrypt files. However, you can perform a system restore and set your system to a previous state. Or, you can use a free file recovery tool to do this job for you. Also, below this article, you fill wind manual removal instructions for .katyusha infection.

Automatic Malware removal tools

How to recover .katyusha ransomware encrypted files and remove the virus

Step 1. Restore system into last known good state using system restore

1. Reboot your computer to Safe Mode with Command Prompt:

for Windows 7 / Vista/ XP

• Start → Shutdown → Restart → OK.
• Press F8 key repeatedly until Advanced Boot Options window appears.
• Choose Safe Mode with Command Prompt.

for Windows 8 / 10

• Press Power at Windows login screen. Then press and hold Shift key and click Restart.
• Choose Troubleshoot → Advanced Options → Startup Settings and click Restart.
• When it loads, select Enable Safe Mode with Command Prompt from the list of Startup Settings.

 

2.Restore System files and settings.

• When Command Prompt mode loads, enter cd restore and press Enter.
• Then enter rstrui.exe and press Enter again.
• Click “Next” in the windows that appeared.
• Select one of the Restore Points that are available before .katyusha ransomware has infiltrated to your system and then click “Next”.
• To start System restore click “Yes”.

 

Step 2. Complete removal of .katyusha ransomware

After restoring your system, it is recommended to scan your computer with an anti-malware program, like Spyhunter and remove all malicious files related to .katyusha ransomware. You can check other tools here.  

Step 3. Restore .katyusha ransomware affected files using Shadow Volume Copies

If you do not use System Restore option on your operating system, there is a chance to use shadow copy snapshots. They store copies of your files that point of time when the system restore snapshot was created. Usually .katyusha ransomware tries to delete all possible Shadow Volume Copies, so this methods may not work on all computers. However, it may fail to do so. Shadow Volume Copies are only available with Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8. There are two ways to retrieve your files via Shadow Volume Copy. You can do it using native Windows Previous Versions or via Shadow Explorer. a) Native Windows Previous Versions Right-click on an encrypted file and select Properties → Previous versions tab. Now you will see all available copies of that particular file and the time when it was stored in a Shadow Volume Copy. Choose the version of the file you want to retrieve and click Copy if you want to save it to some directory of your own, or Restore if you want to replace existing, encrypted file. If you want to see the content of file first, just click Open.

b) Shadow Explorer It is a program that can be found online for free. You can download either a full or a portable version of Shadow Explorer. Open the program. On the left top corner select the drive where the file you are looking for is a stored. You will see all folders on that drive. To retrieve a whole folder, right-click on it and select “Export”. Then choose where you want it to be stored.

Step 4. Use Data Recovery programs to recover .katyusha ransomware encrypted files

There are several data recovery programs that might recover encrypted files as well. This does not work in all cases but you can try this:

• We suggest using another PC and connect the infected hard drive as slave. It is still possible to do this on infected PC though.
• Download a data recovery program.
• Install and scan for recently deleted files.

Note: In many cases it is impossible to restore data files affected by modern ransomware. Thus I recommend using decent cloud backup software as precaution. We recommend checking out Carbonite, BackBlaze, CrashPlan or Mozy Home.