Crystal Ransomware

What is Crystal Ransomware?

Crystal Ransomware is a harmful malicious application whose entrance brings many problems to users. The main problem is the loss of personal data. It will not leave a single image, document, video, or another important file intact if it ever successfully enters your system. We have to admit that this infection is not finished yet and currently encrypts files only in its author’s testing environment, but there is a huge possibility that it will be updated one day and, if this happens, it might show up on unprotected systems. You might be reading this article because you are a curious person, but we believe that some readers of this article have already encountered this infection. Those poor users must delete this ransomware infection as soon as possible. The version malware researchers working at anti-spyware-101.com have analyzed, i.e. the one that does not encrypt files, does not leave any ransom note for victims. In other words, it does not demand money, but we cannot promise that Crystal Ransomware will not want your money either if you encounter its new version. In any event, you must uninstall the ransomware infection from your system. You cannot do anything about its presence because this infection creates a point of execution, allowing it to launch automatically with the Windows OS, on a compromised machine. In other words, it will be active on your PC and might perform various undesirable activities.

Where does Crystal Ransomware come from?

It is still unclear how Crystal Ransomware will be distributed because, at the time of writing, its infection rate was extremely low and it was not disseminated actively. According to researchers at anti-spyware-101.com, this ransomware infection should not differ much from other crypto-threats – cyber crooks should start distributing it mainly via spam emails. Malicious applications usually slither onto computers when users open malicious attachments they contain or click on malicious links they find inside these emails. If Crystal Ransomware manages to enter a system successfully, it immediately creates a Value in the Run registry key so that it could continue working on a victim’s machine even after the computer reboot. Researchers have also noticed that it makes copies of itself in %APPDATA% and %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup. Since it makes all these modifications upon the successful arrival on the system, we would lie if we said that you could erase Crystal Ransomware easily. This does not mean that you will have to live with this infection – you could definitely delete it with our help.

What does Crystal Ransomware do?

Since Crystal Ransomware encrypts such directories as %USERPROFILE%\Documents, %USERPROFILE%\Pictures, %USERPROFILE%\Desktop, %USERPROFILE%\Downloads, %USERPROFILE%\Music, %USERPROFILE%\Videos, and %USERPROFILE%\OneDrive in its creator’s testing environment, there is basically no doubt that it will not leave those files unencrypted on victims’ machines either. All these files get a .CRYSTAL extension appended to them. Unfortunately, you could not unlock your files even if you somehow manage to remove the appended extension because they are locked using the AES cipher. Because of this, files can only be unlocked with special software. The author of Crystal Ransomware is the one that has it. If it starts using Crystal Ransomware as a tool to get money from users, it is very likely that you will get an offer to purchase the decryptor. In the opinion of our specialists, users should not send money to malicious software developers no matter how badly they need to get their files back because they might not give a decryptor to users, but, of course, they will definitely take the money sent to them.

Locking files is not the only activity Crystal Ransomware performs, research has shown. This infection might also connect to its C&C server and then carry out such commands as disabling the Firewall, downloading files from the Internet, opening certain websites, and more. It acts like this in the environment it is being tested, so specialists believe that it might act the same on a victim’s computer as well. This is one of many reasons you cannot let this infection stay on your system.

How to delete Crystal Ransomware

Scroll down, locate our manual removal guide, and let it help you erase Crystal Ransomware manually. All files and registry entries belonging to this threat must be deleted completely so that this infection could not revive. If you do not trust your abilities, you should delete this malicious application from your PC automatically. You will, first and foremost, have to acquire the reputable scanner. There are, unfortunately, no malware removers that could unlock files too.

Crystal Ransomware removal guide

1. Open Task Manager (tap Ctrl+Shift+Esc) and open the Processes tab.
2. Kill suspicious processes (right-click on the process and click End task/End Process).
3. Close the window.
4. Press Win+R.
5. Enter regedit and press Enter.
6. Go to HKCU\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run.
7. Locate the CRYSTAL value, select it, and click Delete.
8. Close Registry Editor and open Explorer (tap Win+E).
9. Delete four executable files, e.g. 0NgRB.exe, 3nRc8.exe, Chv9q.exe, and mIHHo.exe from %APPDATA% and four .exe files, e.g. 6fMeIbYT.exe, EYN3gRa7.exe, HU1ZkqBN.exe, and PckC45VC.exe from %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup.
10. Delete suspicious recently downloaded files from %TEMP%, %USERPROFILE%\Downloads, and %USERPROFILE%\Desktop.
11. Empty Recycle bin. Download Removal Tool100% FREE spyware scan and
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Stop these Crystal Ransomware Processes: