Again Ransomware (. Again File) — Removal Guide

What is Again virus?

Again will append its own .again extension to the name of every encoded file. For example, an image named “photo.jpg” will be altered to “photo.jpg.again”. In the same manner, the Excel table named “table.xlsx” will be altered to “table.xlsx.again”, and so on.

In every directory that contains the encrypted files, a How To Restore Your Files.txt file will be found. It is a ransom money memo. Therein you can find information about the ways of contacting the racketeers and some other remarks. The ransom note usually contains a description of how to purchase the decryption tool from the tamperers. That is it.

In the picture below, you can see what a directory with files encrypted by the Again looks like. Each filename has the “.again” extension added to it.

How did Again ransomware end up on my PC?

There are currently three most popular methods for hackers to have the Again virus settled in your system. These are email spam, Trojan introduction and peer-to-peer networks.

If you access your inbox and see emails that look just like notifications from utility services companies, postal agencies like FedEx, Internet providers, and whatnot, but whose “from” field is strange to you, be wary of opening those letters. They are very likely to have a malicious file enclosed in them. Therefore, it is even more dangerous to download any attachments that come with emails like these.

Another option for ransom hunters is a Trojan file model³. A Trojan is a program that gets into your machine pretending to be something different. For instance, you download an installer of some program you want or an update for some service. However, what is unboxed turns out to be a harmful agent that compromises your data. As the update package can have any name and any icon, you have to make sure that you can trust the resource of the things you’re downloading. The optimal thing is to use the software companies’ official websites.

As for the peer-to-peer file transfer protocols like torrents or eMule, the danger is that they are even more trust-based than the rest of the Web. You can never know what you download until you get it. Our suggestion is that you use trustworthy websites. Also, it is reasonable to scan the folder containing the downloaded objects with the anti-malware utility as soon as the downloading is finished.