Vesrato Cryptovirus - How to remove

Vesrato cryptovirus can cost you a lot. Family photos, personal projects, work files are locked by the virus and, while locked, they’re as good as gone. The goal of the developers of Vesrato is to make money from desperate victims who agree to pay a few hundred dollars to get their files back in this criminals extortion scheme.

There are a lot of reasons for why you should not pay the ransom unless you absolutely have to:

• It does not remove the Vesrato virus and repeat encryptions are common.
• Paying does not guarantee getting the files back.
• In general, some ransomware is decryptable and you shouldn’t pay until after you’ve looked into your free decryption options.
• Vesrato installs a credential stealer that, if you access sensitive accounts using the infected computer, will try to steal your passwords and usernames.
• The ransom is big, that sort of money should not be spent in the spur of the moment.
• It’s possible that you have a backup of your data that you can restore your most important files from, such as a website or some removable media; don’t pay for your files if they were saved elsewhere.

How to remove Vesrato

This virus doesn’t fail to trigger the alarms of most competent antivirus tools, as can be seen on this VirusTotal page. So, a professional tool like Spyhunter would be able to detect it. Manual removal is also possible but you need to know where Vesrato hid on your device, as well as the other dangerous programs, like the info stealer AZORult.

Automatic Malware removal tools

The virus generally comes with various pirated files from the internet, as well as fake programs that were disguised as something legitimate. Email and social media messages with files and download links can also be used to spread Vesrato. Guides and posts that tell you how to activate your programs “for free” sometimes lead to this ransomware, as well. This is good to be aware of so that you can possibly avoid malware in the future since these methods are used by a variety of viruses, not just Vesrato.

How Vesrato encrypts files

Vesrato is similar in principle to FilesLocker, Ransomwared, Boom — viruses which encrypt your files and then try to then collect money from the victims. With how popular a threat cryptoviruses still are, it must be working well, unfortunately.

Vesrato uses cryptography to turn the content of your files into scrambled nonsense. The seemingly-random content that replaced your files is not entirely random, however. The algorithms that are used allow the encryption to be reversed if the decryption key is known.

The only way that Vesrato’s key is known is if, during the encryption (which happens in a few waves), Vesrato failed to contact the server that belongs to the criminals behind this cryptovirus. If Vesrato was forced to run offline, it was forced to use a hardcoded key, and it’s theoretically possible to discover it. Based on this principle, a researcher called Demonslay335 spent his free time to try and discover the decryption keys that can be used to unlock the files encrypted by Vesrato and its older siblings (Vesrato belongs to a ransomware family known as STOP or Djvu). Some people make the mistake of believing that this solution can eventually decrypt all of their files, however, they’re mistaken. The majority of Vesrato’s victims probably will never be able to decrypt their files. But a small number might be lucky enough to get their data back, without having needed to deal with the cybercriminals.

So, another way to get the files back might be needed. If you did not use the infected computer too much, you might see some success using a data recovery program. These programs are able to peer inside a hard drive (magnetic disk) and see the data of deleted files and removed files.

But, of course, the proper way to restore your files would be to use backups. Backing up your files is something everyone should do — not just because of the ransomware threat, but also because disks fail, computers break, and even get stolen. The thing is, even if you never intentionally made a comprehensive backup, you might have some of your most important files saved somewhere: as an email attachment, in removable media, or in the cloud.

Finally, look into the option of reporting this to law enforcement or the cybercrime authority in your country. The people who spread Vesrato are extorting money in a criminal way and not many victims report this. But if the extortionists are caught, sometimes universal decryption keys are discovered and released to the public, allowing all the victims who kept the locked files to finally decrypt them.

How to recover Vesrato Cryptovirus encrypted files and remove the virus

Step 1. Restore system into last known good state using system restore

1. Reboot your computer to Safe Mode with Command Prompt:

for Windows 7 / Vista/ XP

• Start → Shutdown → Restart → OK.
• Press F8 key repeatedly until Advanced Boot Options window appears.
• Choose Safe Mode with Command Prompt.

for Windows 8 / 10

• Press Power at Windows login screen. Then press and hold Shift key and click Restart.
• Choose Troubleshoot → Advanced Options → Startup Settings and click Restart.
• When it loads, select Enable Safe Mode with Command Prompt from the list of Startup Settings.

 

2.Restore System files and settings.

• When Command Prompt mode loads, enter cd restore and press Enter.
• Then enter rstrui.exe and press Enter again.
• Click “Next” in the windows that appeared.
• Select one of the Restore Points that are available before Vesrato Ransomware has infiltrated to your system and then click “Next”.
• To start System restore click “Yes”.

 

Step 2. Complete removal of Vesrato Cryptovirus

After restoring your system, it is recommended to scan your computer with an anti-malware program, like Spyhunter and remove all malicious files related to Vesrato Ransomware. You can check other tools here.  

Step 3. Restore Vesrato Cryptovirus affected files using Shadow Volume Copies

If you do not use System Restore option on your operating system, there is a chance to use shadow copy snapshots. They store copies of your files that point of time when the system restore snapshot was created. Usually Vesrato Ransomware tries to delete all possible Shadow Volume Copies, so this methods may not work on all computers. However, it may fail to do so. Shadow Volume Copies are only available with Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8. There are two ways to retrieve your files via Shadow Volume Copy. You can do it using native Windows Previous Versions or via Shadow Explorer. a) Native Windows Previous Versions Right-click on an encrypted file and select Properties → Previous versions tab. Now you will see all available copies of that particular file and the time when it was stored in a Shadow Volume Copy. Choose the version of the file you want to retrieve and click Copy if you want to save it to some directory of your own, or Restore if you want to replace existing, encrypted file. If you want to see the content of file first, just click Open.

b) Shadow Explorer It is a program that can be found online for free. You can download either a full or a portable version of Shadow Explorer. Open the program. On the left top corner select the drive where the file you are looking for is a stored. You will see all folders on that drive. To retrieve a whole folder, right-click on it and select “Export”. Then choose where you want it to be stored.

Step 4. Use Data Recovery programs to recover Vesrato Cryptovirus encrypted files

There are several data recovery programs that might recover encrypted files as well. This does not work in all cases but you can try this:

• We suggest using another PC and connect the infected hard drive as slave. It is still possible to do this on infected PC though.
• Download a data recovery program.
• Install and scan for recently deleted files.

Note: In many cases it is impossible to restore data files affected by modern ransomware. Thus I recommend using decent cloud backup software as precaution. We recommend checking out Carbonite, BackBlaze, CrashPlan or Mozy Home.