Horsedeal Ransomware

What is Horsedeal Ransomware?

If you come across Horsedeal Ransomware, your Desktop image might be replaced with a picture of horses at sunset. The bad news is that the malicious application should also encrypt your files. As a result, you could lose your photos, documents, and other files forever if you have no backups on removable media devices or cloud storage. A special decryption tool and a unique decryption key are the only things that can decrypt the malware’s locked files. Unfortunately, the threat's creators, who may have them, will most likely want to be paid for providing such tools, and there are no guarantees that they will. In other words, if you try to purchase their decryption tools, you might get scammed. Therefore, we advise against paying the ransom if you decide you cannot risk losing your money. To learn how to erase Horsedeal Ransomware and other things about it, we invite you to read the rest of this article.

Where does Horsedeal Ransomware come from?

Horsedeal Ransomware’s installer might be spread through malicious websites or spam emails. To avoid such content, it is essential to pay attention to your browser’s and your antimalware tool’s warnings. However, sometimes there might be no warning, which is why you should never lose your guard. If you are planning on opening a file that comes from an unknown sender or an unreliable website despite the risks, you should at least scan it with a reliable antimalware tool first. Scanning files might take a bit of your time, but it could save you from infecting your device accidentally. It might be hard to believe, but a lot of victims of ransomware and similar threats get their devices infected unknowingly because their installers do not look malicious, for example, such files might look like documents. Thus, if you do not want to be tricked into launching malware, you should always be careful.

How does Horsedeal Ransomware work?

It might sound strange, but one of the first things that Horsedeal Ransomware ought to do after it gets in is to check whether you use the Kazakh, Belarusian, Tajik, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyz, Tatar, Azerbaijani, or Armenian language. Users who do can count themselves lucky as the malware should not encrypt their files. Probably, the threat’s creators are sympathetic to people who speak the listed languages. As for users who do not, all of their data located on the infected device should become encrypted. The fastest way to separate files that are encrypted is to look for the .horsedeal extension. It should appear at the end of encrypted files’ names, e.g., text.docx.horsedeal.

After encryption is over, Horsedeal Ransomware should delete shadow copies, change the Desktop picture with an image described earlier, and place a ransom note titled #Decryption#.txt in all folders that have encrypted files. The message in these notes should be the same. It ought to explain that files were encrypted with a secure encryption algorithm and that they can be decrypted only with the help of the malware’s developers. The rest of the text instructs users on how to contact the hackers. It also suggests that you would need to pay to get decryption tools. As said earlier, doing so could be risky, and if you do not wish to take any chances, it might be best to ignore the ransom notes.

How to eliminate Horsedeal Ransomware?

Since the malware kills a lot of processes upon entering a system, it might be best to restart it in Safe Mode with Networking. The instructions placed below show how to do this as well as how to erase Horsedeal Ransomware manually. If you prefer using automatic features, we advise employing a legitimate antimalware tool that would be able to eliminate Horsedeal Ransomware. You should do this as soon as you restart your system in Safe Mode with Networking.

Restart the device in Safe Mode with Networking

Windows 8/Windows 10

1. Press Windows key+I and tap the Power button.
2. Tap and hold the Shift key; then pick Restart.
3. Pick Troubleshoot from the Advanced Options menu.
4. Select Startup Settings, choose Restart, then click the F5 key and restart the computer.

Windows XP/Windows Vista/Windows 7

1. Go to Start and select the Shutdown options.
2. Select Restart, then tap and hold the F8 key as soon as the computer begins restarting.
3. Choose from Safe Mode or Safe Mode with Networking in the Advanced Boot Options window.
4. Press Enter and log on.

Delete Horsedeal Ransomware

1. Open File Explorer (Windows key+E).
2. Locate these paths:
   %TEMP%
   %USERPROFILE%\Downloads
   %USERPROFILE%\Desktop
3. Locate the malicious application’s launcher (could be any recently downloaded file).
4. Right-click it and select Delete.
5. Look for documents called #Decryption#.txt, right-click them, and press Delete.
6. Exit File Explorer.
7. Empty your Recycle Bin.
8. Restart the computer. Download Removal Tool100% FREE spyware scan and
   tested removal of Horsedeal Ransomware*