Pickles Ransomware

When Pickles Ransomware enters your operating system and encrypts your personal files, it quickly informs that you only have 72 hours to pay a ransom. Although this should lead to the decryption of your files, the ransom is very big, and there are no guarantees that the cyber criminals standing behind this infection would keep their promises. The distribution of this infection is still very mysterious, and it is possible that cyber criminals have not started spreading it yet. Hopefully, you are reading this report just to be informed about the security threats that you might face, and not because your operating system has already been infected. In either case, you should continue reading this report to learn more about the infection. We also discuss the removal of Pickles Ransomware. If you think of any questions while reading, add them to the comments section below, and we will try our best to answer as soon as possible.

Our research team believes that Pickles Ransomware is not yet in the wild because the sample that was tested did not look like a real infection. Ransomware threats are usually introduced to users via corrupted spam emails, and their launchers, of course, are camouflaged to trick users into executing them. This ransomware, on the other hand, does not pose as something else, and the launcher even has the Python icon (it was coded in Python). Despite that, Pickles Ransomware has the potential to encrypt your files, and it is most likely to use the well-known AES encryption algorithm. It has been used by Damage Ransomware, Trump Locker Ransomware, and many other infamous infections. The data of the targeted files is encrypted in a way that even file decryptors cannot recover them. That is exactly why ransomware infections are so efficient: You either pay the ransom, or you lose your personal files.

Pickles Ransomware not only encrypts the files but also renames them and attaches a unique extension to them. It was found that a string of 30 random characters can replace regular files’ names and the “.EnCrYpTeD” is attached to them (e.g., 1cc2dd9f42764025fa327755c9c3d4.EnCrYpTeD). That is a very devious trick because that might make it impossible for you to figure out which files were encrypted. Of course, you can always look at the files that were not encrypted to check out which ones were. Are your files backed up? If they are, you do not need to waste your time identifying the corrupted files or trying to figure out what you should do. If your files can be extracted from an external drive or online storage, you should delete Pickles Ransomware ASAP. If you do not have this luxury, you might choose to pay attention to the ransom requests and, possibly, pay the sum demanded in return of file decryption.

When the encryption is complete, Pickles Ransomware changes the background image to introduce you to a warning pushing to open the file called “READ_ME_TO_DECRYPT.txt”. This file is created on the Desktop, but it might be placed in every folder that contains corrupted files. This TXT file should show a Bitcoin Address to which you are supposed to transfer the money to (the test sample asked for 1 Bitcoin, which, at the moment, is around $1200). If you pay the ransom, you are then asked to send an email to cyber criminals (e.g., at random_anonymous@gmail.com), so that they could provide you with a password. You supposedly need to enter this password in “to_decrypt.py”, another file that ransomware creates. There is one more file that Pickles Ransomware creates, and it is called “encrypted.txt” (it should show paths to all encrypted files). Although it seems as if this ransomware functions well, we do not know whether or not the password would be provided to the victims or if it would work.

In case Pickles Ransomware attacks your computer, you can follow the instructions below to remove it manually. As you can see, the first task is to find and remove the malicious launcher, which might be hard to do. If you are unable to delete Pickles Ransomware manually, install anti-malware software that automatically finds and eliminates all malicious components. We strongly suggest using this software if you want to keep your operating system guarded against malware in the future as well. You should also take care of your files by backing them up in the future.

Pickles Ransomware Removal

1. Right-click the {unknown name}.exe launcher file and select Delete.
2. Move to the Desktop and Delete the file named READ_ME_TO_DECRYPT.txt.
3. Delete the file called encrypted.txt.
4. Finally, Delete the file named to_decrypt.py.
5. Empty Recycle Bin and then examine your operating system using a legitimate malware scanner.