Paradise malware; everything you need to know
Paradise malware is the most complicated and dangerous malware out there, it has been around the year 2017 and has been a consistent nightmare for plenty of users around the globe. It is a ransomware in which the attackers use the phishing emails and malicious attachments luring the victim to click them or open the attachments which would successfully yield them the overall control of their system.
Why paradise is different from other ransomware?
Well, it is true the paradise ransomware is quite different from the other ransomware around it in a seemingly blatant way. If the user ends up downloading the malicious files then the malicious source code takes over the current OS of the user's machine and encrypts each and every file it can find within the hard drive. Not only this but the paradise ransomware would also leave a note informing the user that all the files on their hard drive have been encrypted and in order to decrypt these files the user must have to make the payment in terms of bitcoin.
No further instructions are provided such as how many Bitcoins are required but it surely presents with other instructions such as how the users can go about purchasing the Bitcoins and a paradise contact email. One of the most daunting things about paradise ransomware is that it targets some of the most important files stored in your machines such as the video, audio, documents, and other user-oriented files with extensions as .pdf, .docx, .doc, .xls and many other similar file types. The threat affects all the machines running on the Windows 7 to Windows 10.
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How does Paradise malware work?
One of the most initial thing that sets the Paradise malware in motion is contacting the victim using the Phishing emails. The email consists of the IQY files that are the (Web Query Files). What makes paradise a little different from other ransomware is that it is the first one to use these file types. It only consists of URLs where the payload is and not the payload itself. This is one of those file types that has not attracted much attention from the information security world before.
As it doesn't have payloads within it therefore the ransomware program can be leveraged to download the commands in the form of various Excel formulas which in turn uses the PowerShell, CMD, or other prompts to abuse the system processes.
Why it is so difficult to deal with?
One of the reasons due to which the Paradise ransomware is so difficult to deal with is because of its use of the URLs. This is the reason why it is an absolute nightmare for the cybersecurity teams out there because they then have to use the third-party URL reputation web service to effectively respond to the threat. Paradise can also use the IQY file types where it has all the malicious URLs to engage in further attacks and carrying on with an attack rampage.
The unfolding of Paradise ransomware
The very initial paradise infection starts in the form of contacting the victim via the phishing email. When the user clicks on the file or on the download link the IQY file will be downloaded to the computing device or the specified machine of the user. Once that is done the paradise ransomware would start to unpack itself using a self-injection technique to a new location within the compromised machine’s directory.
Once the malware is settled to a new location into the compromised computer’s memory it releases an executable with the unpackaged ransomware. Dealing with this long and tedious process the paradise ransomware would then attempt to disable the Windows security or Antivirus system by changing the registry value to the DisableAntiSpyware. This way the paradise ransomware is within the memory channel running as the executable while it has terminated the defenses of the machine as well by disabling the antivirus or antispyware systems.
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Executing the main attack
The above process only relates to the Paradise malware taking over the machine but how the attack is initiated is yet to come. When it has built its nest the paradise malware would then look for the potential strings and attempts to kill them that can come in its way of remaining in control of the things. It is known as the typical ransomware action because it frees the handles from the important files so that these can be encrypted. It then uses the help from some of the most sophisticated algorithms in order to encrypt those important files that is another evasive property of the paradise malware.
As the source code is only a URL and doesn’t have an in-house location within the machine it has affected, it makes the jobs of the cybersecurity experts vividly complicated and challenging.
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