Barrax Ransomware

Most of the time users encounter annoying, but not too dangerous applications when they browse the web. However, sometimes the likes of Barrax Ransomware enter target computers, too. This program is a malicious infection that falls into the ransomware category. Ransomware programs are there to hold user computers hostage until users do what they are told. It is worth mentioning that sometimes ransomware programs do not fulfill their promises even if users do pay the ransom fee. Hence, you should not look for a way to pay this infection. Remove Barrax Ransomware from your computer right away and then safeguard the system against other potential threats.

One of the most disturbing things about this program is that it can encrypt your files. File-encrypting ransomware applications have been on the rise for the last two years. And it is not just original infections that freely infect users worldwide. There are a lot of ransomware infections that have been tweaked for a particular customer because it is possible to buy a ransomware code on the darknet market. Therefore, quite often it is hard to know whether the people behind a particular infection are the ones who created it or the ones who bought it.

Nevertheless, the fact that you were infected with a ransomware program remains. It is very likely that this application entered your computer through a spam email attachment. If you have recently received an invoice message or any kind of notification with a file attached and, consequently, you have opened that file, it could have been the Barrax Ransomware installer file. Ransomware programs trick unsuspecting users into believing that they need to open a specific document to check its contents, while in fact the file only masquerades as a legitimate document, waiting for a user to fall into the trap.

When Barrax Ransomware enters your computer, the program does what any other genuine ransomware infection can do. It scans your computer looking for the files it can encrypt. Normally, ransomware programs do not encrypt ALL files on the system because then the computer would no longer work properly. This type of infection still needs your computer to work because it needs you to send the ransom payment. Therefore, Barrax Ransomware will mostly affect your personal documents, photos, audio, and video files. Attacking the personal data is a method that usually works because then users feel they must pay the ransom or else they will never get their files back.

The program uses the AES-256 encryption key to lock your files, but it does not lock your computer’s screen. Once the files have been affected by this program, they will have a new extension added to their original filenames. For example, image.jpg filename will look like image.jpg.BarRax. As you can see, the extension is the reason this program is called Barrax Ransomware.

Aside from encrypting your files, the program also displays a notification that says all your files have been encrypted and now you must visit the given hyperlink to decrypt your files for free. However, the link redirects users to the barrax.tk forum, and this website is absolutely legal. It does not have anything to do with the infection, so it seems that whoever started spreading the infection did not think through it well. What’s more, there is no public decryption tool available at the moment, so the users affected by the program may not be able to retrieve their data unless they have an external backup.

What we mean by external back is an external hard drive or a virtual cloud drive where you keep copies of your most important files. What’s more, sometimes users save a lot of their files in their inbox or outbox without even realizing it. Please check your inbox to see just how many files you have there. It is very likely that your most recent documents will be saved there.

As far as Barrax Ransomware is concerned, you need to remove it before you transfer the healthy files into your computer. The files of this program might be dropped in various directories across your system, so if you do not want to go through this process manually, you can always delete the infection with an automated antispyware tool. Manual removal is recommended only if you are an experienced computer user.

How to Remove Barrax Ransomware

1. Open your Downloads folder.
2. Find the most recently downloaded EXE files.
3. Delete the files and press Win+R.
4. The Run prompt will open. Type %Temp% into the Open box.
5. Click OK and delete random-named EXE files from the directory.
6. Press Win+R again and type %WinDir%. Hit Enter.
7. Navigate to the SysWow64 folder and delete random EXE files.
8. Go to the System32 folder and delete the same random files.
9. Scan your computer with a licensed antispyware tool.