Nitro22 Virus (. Nitro Files) — How to Remove?

What is known about the Nitro22virus?

Nitro22 will append its extra .nitro extension to the name of every encoded file. For instance, an image named “photo.jpg” will be altered to “photo.jpg.nitro”. Just like the Excel file with the name “table.xlsx” will end up as “table.xlsx.nitro”, and so on.

In every directory containing the encoded files, a #Decryption#.txt text file will appear. It is a ransom money note. Therein you can find information about the ways of paying the ransom and some other remarks. The ransom note usually contains a description of how to buy the decryption tool from the Nitro22 developers. That is how they do it.

In the image below, you can see what a folder with files encrypted by the Nitro22 looks like. Each filename has the “.nitro” extension appended to it.

How did my computer get infected with Nitro22 ransomware?

Nowadays, there are three most popular ways for evil-doers to have the Nitro22 virus working in your system. These are email spam, Trojan infiltration and peer-to-peer networks.

If you access your mailbox and see letters that look like familiar notifications from utility services providers, delivery agencies like FedEx, Internet providers, and whatnot, but whose addresser is unknown to you, be wary of opening those emails. They are most likely to have a ransomware item enclosed in 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 virus scheme². A Trojan is an object that infiltrates into your computer disguised as something else. Imagine, you download an installer for some program you need or an update for some program. However, what is unboxed turns out to be a harmful program that compromises your data. As the update wizard can have any title and any icon, you have to make sure that you can trust the source of the files you’re downloading. The optimal thing is to use the software developers’ official websites.

As for the peer-to-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 guess 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 items with the anti-malware utility as soon as the downloading is done.