Mr. Robot TV series has become the inspiration for malware writers to create a ransomware, called Fsociety. The virus aims to imitate a fictional hacking group from the famous TV series, just like Anonymous is. As much as we enjoy hearing new Mr. Robot news, this one is unfortunate, because the Fsociety ransomware uses an extremely strong encryption algorithm, called AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) to encrypt the files of users. Everyone who has been infected by this threat should read this article to learn how to remove the Fsociety crypto-virus and try to restore encrypted files by it.
Threat Summary
| Name | Fsociety Ransomware |
| Type | Ransomware |
| Short Description | Encrypts user files with AES cipher and RSA key and sets a wallpaper from the famous TV series Mr.Robot. |
| Symptoms | The user may witness changed wallpaper to an Fsociety mask and they may find their files to be unable to be opened. |
| Distribution Method | Via an Exploit kit, JavaScript or Trojan.Downloader |
| Detection Tool | See If Your System Has Been Affected by Fsociety Ransomware Download Malware Removal Tool |
| User Experience | Join our forum to Discuss Fsociety Ransomware. |
| Data Recovery Tool | Windows Data Recovery by Stellar Phoenix Notice! This product scans your drive sectors to recover lost files and it may not recover 100% of the encrypted files, but only few of them, depending on the situation and whether or not you have reformatted your drive. |
Fsociety Ransomware – How Does It Spread
The creators of the Fsociety ransomware may use a different set of tools to replicate this virus. They may purchase spamming software that may distribute malicious URLs that may infect users using a JavaScript and drive-by-downloads by simply clicking on the URLs. Such URLs may be distributed in different ways, like referral spam, for instance. In addition to this, Fsociety ransomware may spread via malicious e-mail attachments, that are spam e-mails or phishing ones. The files may look like legitimate Microsoft Office documents. However, they are nothing like such, since they are disguised to get affected users to open them.
Fsociety Ransomware – More Information
Similar to Mr. Robot’s second season, Fsociety ransomware, uses strong encryption to hold the files of the victim’s computer hostage until a ransom payoff has been completed. When executed, Fsociety ransomware may drop it’s files in different places and under different names. The most often chosen names by malware writers are:
In addition to that, Fsociety ransomware is based on the EDA2 ransomware project which is an open source ransomware code uploaded online and created by Utku Sen. Since then, many variants of the EDA2 project have popped up, because all it takes is someone who knows coding to take this source code and design own version of ransomware, just like Fsociety ransomware variant is.
As soon as the Fsociety ransomware has infected a computer, it may begin encrypting files. The Fsociety virus may be pre-programmed to scan for a wide variety of file extensions which it encrypts. Some of those files may be the following:
→ “PNG .PSD .PSPIMAGE .TGA .THM .TIF .TIFF .YUV .AI .EPS .PS .SVG .INDD .PCT .PDF .XLR .XLS .XLSX .ACCDB .DB .DBF .MDB .PDB .SQL .APK .APP .BAT .CGI .COM .EXE .GADGET .JAR .PIF .WSF .DEM .GAM .NES .ROM .SAV CAD Files .DWG .DXF GIS Files .GPX .KML .KMZ .ASP .ASPX .CER .CFM .CSR .CSS .HTM .HTML .JS .JSP .PHP .RSS .XHTML. DOC .DOCX .LOG .MSG .ODT .PAGES .RTF .TEX .TXT .WPD .WPS .CSV .DAT .GED .KEY .KEYCHAIN .PPS .PPT .PPTX ..INI .PRF Encoded Files .HQX .MIM .UUE .7Z .CBR .DEB .GZ .PKG .RAR .RPM .SITX .TAR.GZ .ZIP .ZIPX .BIN .CUE .DMG .ISO .MDF .TOAST .VCD SDF .TAR .TAX2014 .TAX2015 .VCF .XML Audio Files .AIF .IFF .M3U .M4A .MID .MP3 .MPA .WAV .WMA Video Files .3G2 .3GP .ASF .AVI .FLV .M4V .MOV .MP4 .MPG .RM .SRT .SWF .VOB .WMV 3D .3DM .3DS .MAX .OBJ R.BMP .DDS .GIF .JPG ..CRX .PLUGIN .FNT .FON .OTF .TTF .CAB .CPL .CUR .DESKTHEMEPACK .DLL .DMP .DRV .ICNS .ICO .LNK .SYS .CFG”Source:fileinfo.com
The encrypted files are enciphered with a powerful AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) encryption and the decryption key for them has been encoded in an RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman).
Related Article: Ransomware Encryption Explained – Why Is It So Effective?
The encrypted decryption key is then sent to the cyber-criminals’ command and control server where they have it along with a unique identification number for every user PC they have infected. After this, the wallpaper of the infected computer is changed to the famous Fsociety logo from the TV series Mr. Robot.
While the inspiration of the malware writers led them to choose a good TV series to base their ransomware on, this threat is one of the worse you can see out there. However, no matter how dire and bad the situation is, malware researchers advise users not to pay any ransom money if they see a ransom note asking them to contact the crooks for a payoff. This is due to several obvious reasons:
- You support the cyber-criminals by paying the ransom.
- There is no guarantee that you are going to get your files back.
Remove Fsociety Ransomware and Restore the Encoded Files
The ransomware virus should be removed by following the instructions after this article. Since Fsociety may modify the Windows Registry Editor and in addition to this create multiple files in different locations, malware researchers advise using an advanced anti-malware program to remove it, since it will make sure it is permanently remove without any damage to the encrypted files.
To restore files encrypted by Fsociety ransomware, users are strongly advised to make sure they backup the encrypted files and make copies if they try direct decryption. We have provided some alternatives to try and restore your files in step “3.Restore files encrypted by Fsociety Ransomware” below and advise you to take a look at them. They may not be 100 percent effective but in case you are lucky, haven’t reinstalled your OS and had backups, they may work for you.
