Bydes Virus (. Bydes Files) — How to Remove?

What is Bydes virus?

Bydes adds its specific .bydes extension to the title of every encrypted file. For instance, an image entitled “photo.jpg” will be changed to “photo.jpg.bydes”. Just like the Excel sheet with the name “table.xlsx” will be renamed to “table.xlsx.bydes”, and so on.

When ransomware ends the encryption process, it shows a pop-up window. It is a ransom money note. Therein you can find information about the ways of paying the ransom and some other information. The ransom note usually contains instructions on how to purchase the decryption tool from the tamperers. That is it.

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

How did Bydes ransomware end up on my PC?

Nowadays, there are three most exploited ways for tamperers to have the Bydes virus planted in your digital environment. These are email spam, Trojan injection and peer-to-peer file transfer.

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

Another option for ransom hunters is a Trojan virus model². A Trojan is a program that gets into your PC disguised as something legal. For instance, you download an installer for some program you want or an update for some service. But what is unpacked turns out to be a harmful agent that encrypts your data. As the update file can have any title and any icon, you’d better be sure that you can trust the resource of the stuff you’re downloading. The optimal way is to use the software companies’ official websites.

As for the peer networks like torrents or eMule, the threat is that they are even more trust-based than the rest of the Web. You can never guess what you download until you get it. So you’d better be using trustworthy websites. Also, it is a good idea to scan the directory containing the downloaded objects with the anti-malware utility as soon as the downloading is finished.