Hit by Ransomware? Stop Everything and Read This Before Paying

You come into the office on a Monday morning, turn on your computer, and try to open an Excel spreadsheet. Instead of numbers, the screen flashes an aggressive ransom note.

Your files suddenly end in bizarre extensions like .locked, .crypto, or .djvu. Every single document, photo, and database on your local drive and the connected network share has turned into useless, scrambled garbage. The background wallpaper on your desktop has changed to blood-red text demanding payment in Bitcoin to return a “Decryption Key.”

Welcome to the nightmare of a Ransomware Attack.

When this happens, panic sets in immediately. Before you consider downloading random decryption tools from the internet or negotiating with the attackers, stop and read exactly what you are dealing with.

1. What Is Ransomware and How Does It Work?

Ransomware is highly malicious software (Malware) explicitly designed to hold a user’s computer system or files hostage until a sum of money is paid.

Unlike a traditional virus that tries to steal your passwords or slow down your computer, modern Ransomware operators use military-grade encryption algorithms (such as AES-256 and RSA-2048).

How it infects your system:

• Phishing Emails: The most common vector. An employee clicks on an innocent-looking invoice attachment (a deceptive PDF or Word document) that secretly downloads the payload in the background.
• RDP Vulnerabilities: Hackers scan the internet for companies leaving their Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) ports open and improperly secured. They brute-force the password, log in remotely, and execute the encryption software manually.
• Pirated Software: Downloading illegal cracks for games or expensive software often comes bundled with a silent ransomware payload that triggers days later.

Once the payload runs, it rapidly spiders through your entire hard drive, identifying thousands of file types (documents, databases, images, virtual machines) and mathematically scrambling the data inside them. It leaves behind a completely secure, uncrackable ciphertext.

2. Immediate Action: Isolate the Infection

The absolute worst thing you can do when you see a ransom note is “wait and see.” Ransomware is designed to spread across every mapped network drive, USB stick, and cloud sync folder it can touch.

Take these steps immediately:

1. Disconnect from the Internet/Network: Physically unplug the ethernet cable from the infected machine and turn off the Wi-Fi. Do not shut down the computer yet—just kill its connection to the outside world to stop the spread.
2. Unplug External Drives: If a backup USB hard drive is connected to the infected PC, aggressively rip the cable out. It is better to suffer minor logical corruption from a sudden unplug than total encryption of your only backup.
3. Halt Cloud Syncing: Pause Dropbox, Google Drive, or OneDrive immediately on all other devices to prevent the encrypted, garbage files from overwriting your healthy cloud backups.

3. The Big Dilemma: Should You Just Pay the Ransom?

When businesses look at years of accounting data suddenly locked away, paying the ransom seems like the quickest, albeit painful, way out.

[IMPORTANT] Security Warning:
The FBI and global cybersecurity experts firmly advise against paying the ransom.

Why?

• No Guarantees: You are dealing with criminals. You send the Bitcoin, and they simply disappear without sending the key.
• Double Extortion: In recent years, attackers steal a copy of the sensitive data before encrypting it. They threaten to publish private client information or medical records on the Dark Web unless you pay a second ransom.
• Targeted Again: Once you pay, you signal to the criminal underworld that you are a willing target. They will strike again, knowing you will capitulate.

4. Can Professional Labs Crack the Encryption?

The bitter truth: If a computer is hit by modern, enterprise-tier Ransomware (like LockBit, REvil, or Phobos) that uses state-of-the-art encryption algorithms, nobody on Earth can mathematically break the encryption.

Not even supercomputers can brute-force an AES-256 key within our lifetime. If a local computer shop claims they can “crack” the code for $50, they are either lying or planning to pay the hackers on your behalf and charge you a massive markup.

So, what can data recovery specialists do?

At Datacodex, our approach to ransomware is forensic and highly methodical, focusing on exploiting vulnerabilities rather than breaking unbreakable math:

1. Decrypter Identification: We analyze the exact ransomware strain and the ransom note. Sometimes, the attackers use weak, old variants where Security Researchers have already reverse-engineered a free master decrypter.
2. Volume Shadow Copy Recovery: Ransomware usually attempts to delete the Windows automatic background backups (VSS). We use raw forensic tools to deeply scan the “Unallocated Space” of the hard drive to find leftover, deleted fragments of those shadow copies before they were wiped out.
3. File Carving: We search the deep sectors of the hard drive for temporary versions of your files that Word or Excel created silently right before the attack locked the primary versions.
4. Database Reconstruction: Often, a massive SQL database is too large for the ransomware to fully encrypt quickly. The ransomware might only scramble the first 5% of the file (the header). We strip away the encrypted 5% and use advanced hex editing to rebuild a functional database from the remaining 95% unencrypted raw data.

Summary

A ransomware attack is a chaotic crisis. Do not panic and pay blindly. Disconnect the machine to save the rest of the network, and firmly realize that breaking the encryption via software is impossible. Consult a forensic data recovery specialist to analyze the damage, find unencrypted fragments or hidden backups, and explore every alternative to negotiating with criminals.