Lux Ransomware (. Lux File) — Removal Guide

What is known about the Luxvirus?

Lux appends its extra .lux extension to the title of every encrypted file. For example, an image entitled “photo.jpg” will be changed to “photo.jpg.lux”. In the same manner, the Excel table with the name “table.xlsx” will become “table.xlsx.lux”, and so forth.

In each folder with the encrypted files, a read_it.txt text document will be found. It is a ransom money memo. Therein you can find information about the ways of paying the ransom and some other remarks. The ransom note most probably contains a description of how to purchase the decryption tool from the racketeers. That is pretty much the scheme of the malefaction.

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

How did my machine catch Lux ransomware?

Nowadays, there are three most exploited ways for hackers to have ransomware acting in your digital environment. These are email spam, Trojan infiltration and peer networks.

If you access your mailbox and see letters that look just like notifications from utility services companies, delivery agencies like FedEx, web-access providers, and whatnot, but whose sender is strange to you, be wary of opening those emails. They are most likely to have a harmful item attached to them. Thus it is even more dangerous to download any attachments that come with letters like these.

Another thing the hackers might try is a Trojan horse scheme³. A Trojan is a program that infiltrates into your PC disguised as something else. For instance, you download an installer of some program you want or an update for some software. However, what is unboxed reveals itself a harmful agent that encrypts your data. Since the update package can have any name and any icon, you have to make sure that you can trust the resource of the stuff you’re downloading. The best way is to trust the software developers’ official websites.

As for the peer networks like BitTorrent 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 a good idea to scan the directory containing the downloaded objects with the anti-malware utility as soon as the downloading is done.