Moth ransomware / virus (Virus Removal Guide)

What is Moth ransomware virus?

What are the main features of the Moth ransomware virus

Moth ransomware virus is a cyber infection that terrorizes the computer users by taking over the control over their personal files, encrypting them and then demanding considerable sums of money for the data decryption. As you can see, it is not a pleasant virus to be dealing with. But these types of viruses are growing in popularity and infect more computers every day, so you should be able to recognize them and protect yourself. This particular virus follows the lead of such famous ransomware viruses as Locky, CryptoWall, and many others. It uses the already tested and effective techniques of these infamous infections to encrypt the victim’s files. AES-256 encryption makes the data located on the infected computer virtually inaccessible and the victims often feel like they are left with no other choice but to pay the ransom. Unfortunately, such users are often in for a very unpleasant surprise when the criminals vanish with their money and the file decryption key they promised. So, if there is no guaranteed way to recover your files safely, why not simply delete the virus from your computer? All the efforts put into the program’s development go to waste if the hackers fail to extort money from their victims. Naturally, this demotivates them in creating similar programs in the future. Therefore, you should not waste time too and get over with the Moth removal ASAP using professional virus-fighting utilities such as FortectIntego.

When the virus infects the computer, a wide variety of file extensions will be encrypted. It is unlikely that your important Office documents, videos or images will be left untouched. The same is stated in the READMEPLEASE.TXT file the virus drops on every folder of the computer, featuring infected documents.

Hello.
All your files have been encrypted using our extremely strong private key. There is no way to recover them without our assistance. If you want to get your files back, you must be ready to pay for them. If you are broke and poor, sorry, we cannot help you. If you are ready to pay, then get in touch with us using a secure and anonymous p2p messenger. We have to use a messenger because standard emails get blocked quickly and if our email gets blocked your files will be lost forever.
Go to http://bitmessage.org/, download and run Bitmessage. Click Your Identities tab > then click New > then click OK (this will generate your personal address, you need to do this just once). Then click Send tab.
TO: BM-NBH1WTEWHgxsbHH3w1LjtCix12ZMVzGE
Subject: name of your PC or your IP address or both.
Message: Hi, I am ready to pay.
Click Send button.
You are done.
To get the fastest reply from us with all further instructions, please keep your Bitmessage running on the computer at all times, if possible, or as often as you can because Bitmessage is a bit slow and it takes the time to send and get messages. If you cooperate and follow the instructions, you will get all your files back intact and very, very soon. Thank you.

As it is evident from the message, the virus creators highly focus on maintaining their identities undisclosed. Even for the so-called customer support, they ask the victims to contact them through an anonymous Bitmessage network, while other ransomware usually use email. Such precautions only confirm that the virus creators are ready for some major money extortion and the last thing they want is getting caught. Since the criminals are virtually untrackable, it is even riskier paying the ransom. Therefore, we encourage you to remove Moth from your computer instead of putting the safety of your computer, data, and finances at risk.

What can protect me from this infection?

Ransomware viruses are known for infecting even the best-protected computers. This means that there are not automatic virus-fighting utilities that can protect your computer from malware infection full 100%. Of course, such protection is still vital because it helps withstand the initial cyber attacks. But talking about data protection, data backups it the one and only method to really keep your important information inaccessible to malware. Of course, if you keep an external storage device with the backup data plugged into the computer at the time of the infection, the containing files will most likely be locked. So it is important to disconnect your external storage drives from the PC as soon as you are done backuping your files. This way, you will ensure that your files are safe and that you will be able to recover them quite easily in case your computer is infected with Moth or another ransomware virus.

Suggestions for Moth removal and data recovery:

In case you did not have time to make backup copies of your files and you suddenly found that a ransomware virus had locked your files, you have no other choice but to remove Moth from your computer right away. Only reputable and verified antivirus software can be trusted to deal with the infection. To make sure the virus is eliminated from your computer entirely, you have to update your antivirus utility to its latest version and to run a full system scan. After the scan you can try recovering your data from backup of by using special data recovery utilities such as PhotoRec, R-Studio or Kaspersky virus-fighting utilities, in case you have no backups. If any trouble comes up while removing the virus automatically, please follow a guide below and run the system scan again.