Katyusha Ransomware

Katyusha Ransomware is a recently discovered malicious application anyone who keeps their systems unprotected can find installed on their PCs without their knowledge. Of course, ransomware infections are not ordinary programs. After the successful entrance, Katyusha Ransomware locks users’ files immediately, making it impossible to access any of them until they are decrypted. Unfortunately, decrypting files locked by ransomware infections is not a piece of cake. You need to have a key and a special decryptor to unlock them. Yes, you will be offered to purchase them from cyber criminals behind this ransomware infection, but it would be a huge mistake to do that. In fact, you should not pay a cent to cyber criminals no matter what kind of computer threat you encounter. Whether or not you purchase the key and the decryptor, you will have to delete the ransomware infection yourself because cyber criminals will definitely not remove it for you. If the infection stays active, you might soon find more files encrypted on your system. Without a doubt, the active threat on the system might bring other problems too. For example, theoretically, cyber criminals behind the malicious application might be able to steal information from your system using malware installed on the system.

The entrance of Katyusha Ransomware is usually quite dramatic. Once this computer threat slithers onto computers, it immediately locks files making it impossible to access any of them. This threat encrypts pictures, music, videos, and many other files, as you will see yourself if you ever encounter this nasty computer threat. All encrypted files are marked by appending the .katyusha filename extension to all of them. Next to encrypted personal files, you should find a ransom note dropped on your computer. It comes in two formats: _how_to_decrypt_you_files.txt and _how_to_decrypt_you_files.html. They both contain the same message. The ransom note informs users that their “documents, photos, databases and other important personal files were encrypted!” and then it explains how these files can be fixed. Ransomware infections are developed by cyber criminals to obtain money from users, and, as research has clearly shown, Katyusha Ransomware does the same too. To be more specific, the threat demands 0.5 Bitcoin in exchange for the tool that can unlock files. Once the user pays, he/she has to send the ID and IDKEY indicated in the ransom note to the provided email address (kts2018@protonmail.com). Only 3 days are given to make a payment, so if you are sure you are going to purchase it, do not wait too long. In our opinion, sending money to cyber criminals is nonsense because there are no guarantees that they will give the promised tool. In other words, you might be left without your personal files and without your money.

According to researchers, Katyusha Ransomware should be spread the same as other ransomware infections. That is, users might end up with it after opening malicious email attachments. Also, the threat might appear on their PCs if their RDP connections get hacked. These are standard distribution methods used to spread computer threats; however, it has turned out that Katyusha Ransomware might also be spread through Doublepulsar and Shadowbrokers\EquationGroup exploits as well. This surely distinguishes this malicious application from the majority of other ordinary ransomware infections that are distributed seeking to obtain money from users these days. We cannot promise that you will never encounter any malicious application in your life, but you will considerably lower the chances of encountering malware if you keep security software installed on the system. Do not forget that it must be reliable so that it would work effectively and could protect you against threats, so do not even think about installing security software you have found on a random torrent website.

There are no guarantees that you will manage to fix files encrypted by Katyusha Ransomware, but you still have a chance to protect new files you will create in the future by deleting this infection from your computer. If you do nothing, the chances are high that your files will be encrypted again. Luckily, Katyusha Ransomware is definitely not the most sophisticated malware, so if you use our step-by-step instructions, you should be able to delete it without difficulty.

Delete Katyusha Ransomware

1. Press Win+E.
2. Open %WINDIR%\Temp.
3. Delete two files: Katyusha.dll and ktsi.exe (might be named differently).
4. Check your Desktop, Downloads, and other directories where you keep your recent downloads.
5. Delete recently downloaded suspicious files.
6. Remove ransom notes (_how_to_decrypt_you_files.txt and _how_to_decrypt_you_files.html) from your PC.
7. Empty Recycle Bin.