Blockz Files Ransomware – Remove Blockz Virus

Blockz virus: what is known so far?

Blockz will append its specific .blockZ extension to the name of each encoded file. For example, an image entitled “photo.jpg” will be altered to “photo.jpg.blockZ”. In the same manner, the Excel sheet named “table.xlsx” will be altered to “table.xlsx.blockZ”, and so forth.

In every directory that contains the encrypted files, a How To Restore Your Files.txt file will be created. It is a ransom money memo. It contains information about the ways of contacting the racketeers and some other remarks. The ransom note most probably contains a description of how to buy the decryption tool from the ransomware developers. That is how they do it.

In the screenshot below, you can see what a folder with files encrypted by the Blockz looks like. Each filename has the “.blockZ” extension appended to it.

How did Blockz ransomware end up on my PC?

Nowadays, there are three most exploited ways for tamperers to have ransomware working in your system. These are email spam, Trojan injection and peer-to-peer networks.

If you access your mailbox and see emails that look just like notifications from utility services companies, delivery agencies like FedEx, web-access providers, and whatnot, but whose mailer is strange to you, beware of opening those emails. They are very likely to have a malware item enclosed in them. Thus it is even riskier to download any attachments that come with letters like these.

Another thing the hackers might try is a Trojan virus scheme². A Trojan is an object that gets into your machine pretending to be something different. For instance, you download an installer for some program you need or an update for some program. But what is unpacked turns out to be a harmful agent that corrupts your data. Since the installation file can have any title and any icon, you have to make sure that you can trust the resource of the stuff you’re downloading. The best thing is to trust the software developers’ official websites.

As for the peer-to-peer file transfer protocols like torrents or eMule, the threat 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. So you’d better be using trustworthy resources. Also, it is reasonable to scan the directory containing the downloaded objects with the anti-malware utility as soon as the downloading is done.