What is Asn1 Ransomware?
Asn1 Ransomware is a dangerous malware threat that has just hit the web only recently. According to our malware experts at anti-spyware-101.com, this ransomware attack can be devastating with regard to your files. After this malware infection manages to crawl onto your system, it can encrypt virtually most of your files on your hard disk. This means that you will not be able to open or run them any longer until you decrypt them with specific software or a unique decryption key. It seems that, unfortunately, there is no free tool on the web yet that you could use to restore your files. So unless you have a recently saved backup of your files, it is quite likely that you can say goodbye to them because there is no guarantee that you will get any help from these cyber crooks even after you pay the ransom fee. In fact, we recommend that you act right away and remove Asn1 Ransomware from your operating system if you ever want to use your computer again. Please read on for more information on this vicious program and how you can protect your system from similar malicious attacks.
Where does Asn1 Ransomware come from?
There are two main channels for ransomware infections through which they can silently show up on your system. First, this threat can travel the web via spamming campaigns and it has been reported to use this method only. Spam mails can be very deceiving nowadays as the sender could look very authentic and you would not even have suspicions that they may come from malicious sources. Our sample came with “Incoming Document <service@incomingdocuments.com>” address as the sender, but it can be any legitimate-looking name and address pair. The main thing here is that you will not think that it could be a spam because sometimes even local authorities can show up as senders.
The next stage of the spam scam is that the subject is always something that would draw your eyes right away. In this case, for example, we have found “You have received a new secure document” but it can be anything else relating to an unpaid invoice or a wrongly made hotel booking. Most likely, you would click to view such a mail even if you thought that “this must be a mistake.” And, when you open this mail, you will not become all the wiser since you will not find any useful information regarding the subject; apart from the instruction to view the attached encrypted file. This file is indeed a Word document with malicious macro code. When you download it and run it, you could still stop this infection from happening because you need to click to go into editing mode and allow macros as well to activate this attack. That is the moment when even if you delete Asn1 Ransomware, you will not be able to stop the encryption as it will have already finished its dirty job.
Second, although this ransomware has not been found using this method, we do believe it is important for us to mention it, ransomware programs can also use so-called Exploit Kits to infect your without your knowledge. This type of attack can only succeed if your browsers and drivers (Java and Adobe Flash) are not up-to-date. Cyber criminals can create fake webpages using Exploit Kits, which run malicious Java or Flash codes hidden in the contents of the page. It is enough for such a page to load in your browser and the infection is dropped right away. In order to avoid this, you need to keep your programs and drivers always updated.
How does Asn1 Ransomware work?
This malware infection has been found to encrypt most files on your hard drives excluding the system folders and subfolders as well as your browsers and their files. Unlike most of its peers, this ransomware does not change your file names and does not add a unique extension to them either. After the encryption, an .htm file called “!!!!!readme!!!!!.htm” is dropped onto your desktop and in all of the infected folders as well. This file contains the same ransom note that pops up on your screen after the encryption. This note informs you that your files have been encrypted and introduces five steps for you to accomplish if you want to see or use the encrypted files again.
You can either use the TOR browser (recommended by the crooks) or your other popular browsers (Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Opera) to visit the given URL. On this webpage, you find out that you have to pay 1 Bitcoin (760 US dollars) to the address provided in the message. If you fail to do so within the next 5 days, this ransom fee will double. But whatever this amount is, we do not recommend that you even bother to think about paying. Reports suggest that these criminals do not seem to send you the promised key to recover your files. Therefore, the only choice you have to clean your system is to remove Asn1 Ransomware ASAP.
How can I delete Asn1 Ransomware?
A lot of times it is not too difficult to eliminate ransomware programs because criminals are mostly concerned about the encryption and could not care less about what happens to the infection afterwards. This is true for this dangerous infection as well. Therefore, you can simply delete the files related to this threat and the registry entry it creates to run automatically with every restart of your Windows. Please follow our step-by-step instructions below if you want to manually put an end to this vicious attack. If you do not want to risk further malware invasions, we suggest that you consider employing a powerful anti-malware program, such as SpyHunter. Should you need further assistance with the removal of Asn1 Ransomware, please leave us a comment below.
Remove Asn1 Ransomware from Windows
- Tap Win+E.
- Bin the malicious document file you saved from the spam e-mail as well as “%APPDATA%\4468586b.exe” (the .exe file name could be random)
- Empty your Recycle Bin.
- Tap Win+Q and enter regedit. Hit the Enter key.
- Delete HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\4468586b.exe registry value name where the value data is “C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\4468586b.exe” (the .exe file name could be random)
- Close the editor.
- Reboot your system.
tested removal of Asn1 Ransomware*
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