Bitdefender makes available a universal decryption tool, useful to help victims recover encrypted data from all past attacks suffered by the ransomware MegaCortex. The new tool can be downloaded free of charge and was developed in collaboration with Europol, NoMoreRansomthe Zurich public prosecutor’s office and the Zurich Cantonal Police.
MegaCortex the ransomware that Bitdefender wants to counter
Identified in 2019, MegaCortex has been used by a group of cybercriminals to infect more than 1,800 companies, users and institutions in 71 countries. The damage caused has reached an estimate of over 100 million dollars.
Luckily Bitdefender has been working hard to counter this ransomware by releasing a decryption file specifically designed for the MegaCortex ransomware family. The decryptor was developed in collaboration with Europol, the NoMoreRansom project, the Zurich public prosecutor’s office and the Zurich cantonal police.
In particular, wanting to retrace the context of the story, in October 2021 twelve people were arrested in an operation that had the intention of hitting the criminals who were hiding behind ransomware such as Dharma, MegaCortex e LockerGoga.
The arrested group is responsible for about 1,800 infections, mostly aimed at companies.
After the LockerGoga and RanHassan decryptors, Bitdefender has therefore released a universal tool for MegaCortex infections.
How to recover data
If you are among the victims of MegaCortex ransomware, then you will find Bitdefender’s free download tool useful.
However, pay attention: victims with data encrypted by MegaCortex versions 2 to 4 need the ransom request (per esempio “!! READ_ME!!!. TXT”, “!-! README!-!. RTF”, ecc.) gift. Instead, MegaCortex V1 requires the presence of the ransom note and the TSV log file (for example “fracxidg.tsv”) created by the ransomware.
Lastly Bitdefender has prepared a practical tutorial on how to use the decryptor both in single computer mode and over the network.
To download the decryptor for free you can click on the following link.