Popcorn Time Ransomware Offers to Restore Your Files for Free — If You Infect Two Friends

Instead of luring users into clicking on the link and then asking for money hackers has come up with an innovative approach. Ransomware has been in vogue for almost a decade where modus operandi has become standardized. This has helped hackers in doing way with billions of dollars in last decade by taking way the control over the files or networks and devices leaving user’s at hacker’s wisdom. Most of the time user decides to pay upfront and get back the critical data or simply lose it by wiping up the machine. With constant campaign against such malpractices and attacks people have vigilant and the ransomware cases started to die down but didn’t went way at all.

Hackers have come up with an innovative alternative wherein the ransomware offers an opportunity to recover the files by simply making your two friends victim of the same.

New Ransomware ‘Popcorn Time’

This new ransomware has been named ‘Popcorn Time’ which offers a lucrative deal to the victims by asking them to infect two other friends in order to safeguard their own data. This ransomware is designed to find all the files present on the desktop along with the files present in My Documents folder and encrypt them using the AES-256 encryption.

Like every other ransomware this one also asks users to pay up in Bitcoin in order to salvage their files and the price is set at just 1 Bitcoin which amounts to $780. Secondly the warning screen also lays down the instruction for paying in the Bitcoins in case a user is not so familiar with this popular cyrpto currency. Even after paying the money users should understand that entering the decryption key wrongly for more than four time will result in losing all the data.

Apart from it this malware also offers an opportunity to get back the files by simply infecting any two of your friend’s system. Victims are simply required to click on the link containing the unique ID which will help in downloading the malware. Simply forward it to your friends and save your files is the modus operandi here.

Hackers living up to their bargain

Most of the promises made by the hackers are not kept but this ransomware originators are showing never seen before honor among the hackers attitude. When a user pays the ransom then he gets a decryption key which helps in restoring the files and it is old school. If ransom is unpaid then that data is lost forever. In a number of cases affected users even after paying up the ransom users were unable to get their data back.

Security analysts and firms are actively working towards finding decryption keys for some of the popular ransomware infections which will offer a free way of getting back the files to the victims. But such initiatives will become obsolete if hackers start using Popcorn Time or its enhanced variants in future which encourage towards making other infected in order to save their skins.