Vurten ransomware - How to remove

Vurten ransomware is a lethal infection that might infect your computer and lock your personal files. As most ransomware viruses, it uses a strong cryptography in order to encrypt files and then asks for a ransom.

Usually ransomware viruses ask for something around 1000 USD, however, Vurten really stands out – you will be asked to pay 10 000 USD and that’s insane.

If your computer is infected with this virus and your files are locked, please continue reading the article and we will provide you with instructions how to remove the virus itself and restore your locked personal files.

.improved extension ransomware

Every ransomware virus use some kind of extension that is applied to the end of encrypted files. If your computer is infected with Vurten ransomware virus, all personal files will be locked with extension “.improved” – that is an easy way to identify what kind of virus is operating on your computer.

For instance, if you had a file named “image.jpeg”, after the infection it will look like “image.jpeg.improved”. That also means that you won’t be able to open or use that file in any other way anymore.

In case you have no clue where it came from, there might be a couple of most possible options. First one – it came as an attachment to a spam email letter. It’s a common technique used by cyber criminals. All it takes to open the file attached to the letter to get infected. Usually those attached files look like text or pdf documents with some kind of information that is important to user. That being said, always be very careful about opening emails from spam category and never open attached files if you are not 100 percent sure that the file is legitimate.

Another way how this infection can enter your computer – it can be installed by other viruses that are already operating on your computer. Some of computer viruses keep low profile so you can be not even aware about their presence. For that reason, we recommend to always keep your computer protected by professional anti-malware software. If you don’t have enough knowledge about such software, feel free to take a look at our reviews section.

Once Vurten ransomware is inside, it will immediately start to scan your files and then encrypt them. It will add .improved extension to the end of every file and also drop a “UNCRYPT.README.txt” file on your desktop. It is a ransom note, here’s original text from the message:

Your entire network sensitive data was encrypted with our strong algorithm.
To recover your data send $10000 to the bitcoin address: 1Ln9RxSRuDqqFhCTuqBPBKRMeyhVhRaUG4
If you fo not send money within 7 days, payment will be increased double.
After payment you will receive decryption software.
Contact email: [email protected]

We have already mentioned that crooks behind this virus are asking for an insane ransom – $10 000. They want you to pay it to their Bitcoin address in 7 days after the infection and eventually you should receive a special software that will allow you to decrypt those damaged files.

We do not recommend to pay a ransom in any case, even if those files are very important to you and you need them right now. There are several reasons why you should not do that:

• It’s not known if they have the ability to unlock files;
• Cyber criminals can scam you;
• You would support cyber criminals by paying the ransom.

Instead of that, you should look for other alternatives to solve the problem. First of all, eliminate Vurten virus from your computer. You can do that by downloading and scanning your computer with Spyhunter. Either one of those tools should be able to immediately detect and remove malicious files from your computer.

Now, then the virus itself is gone, try to unlock the files. Unfortunately, there are not many options since there is no free decryptor for .improved extension at the moment. All you can do is to restore locked files from a backup copy if your hard drive. If you have one and it was not corrupted by a virus, follow this system restore guide to retrieve your files.

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