BaN (.BaN) Xorist Ransomware Virus

The Ban virus falls under the Xorist ransomware family. Ransomware of such sort encrypts all the data on your PC (photos, text files, excel tables, music, videos, etc) and adds its extra extension to every file, leaving the HOW TO DECRYPT FILES.txt files in every folder which contains the encrypted files.

What is Ban virus?

☝️ Ban is a Xorist family ransomware virus.

Ban will append its own .BaN extension to the title of every encrypted file. For example, a file entitled “photo.jpg” will be altered to “photo.jpg.BaN”. Likewise, the Excel table with the name “table.xlsx” will be altered to “table.xlsx.BaN”, and so on.

In each directory containing the encoded files, a HOW TO DECRYPT FILES.txt text document will be found. It is a ransom money note. It contains information on the ways of paying the ransom and some other information. The ransom note usually contains instructions on how to buy the decryption tool from the ransomware developers. You can obtain this tool after contacting [email protected] via email. That is it.

Ban Overview:

The HOW TO DECRYPT FILES.txt file accompanying the Ban malware provides the following dispiriting information:

Hello

All your files have been encrypted
if you want to decrypt them you have to pay me 0.03 bitcoin.

Make sure you send the 0.03 bitcoins to this address:
bc1qh9a50kaccf2xjutqhmufgrx2s7ycg8rqajdj6r

If you don't own bitcoin, you can easily buy it from these sites:
www.coinmama.com
www.bitpanda.com
www.localbitcoins.com
www.paxful.com

You can find a larger list here:
hxxps://bitcoin.org/en/exchanges

After sending the bitcoin, contact me at this email address:
[email protected] or [email protected]
with this subject: -
After the payment has been confirmed,
you will get decryptor and decryption keys!

You will also receive information on how to defend against another ransomware attack
and the most important thing is your security hole through which we entered.

Attention!
Do not try other cheaper decryption options because nobody and nothing can
decrypt your files without the keys generated for your server,
you will lose time, money and your files forever!

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

How did my PC catch Ban ransomware?

There is a huge number of possible ways of ransomware infiltration.

Nowadays, there are three most exploited ways for criminals to have ransomware working in your digital environment. These are email spam, Trojan introduction and peer-to-peer networks.

• Another thing the hackers might try is a Trojan horse scheme. A Trojan is a program that infiltrates into your PC disguised as something else. For example, you download an installer of some program you need or an update for some service. But what is unpacked turns out to be a harmful program that compromises your data. Since the update file can have any name and any icon, you have to make sure that you can trust the resource of the things you’re downloading. The best thing is to trust the software companies’ official websites.
• As for the peer-to-peer networks like torrent trackers 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 resources. Also, it is a good idea to scan the folder containing the downloaded files with the antivirus as soon as the downloading is done.

How do I get rid of ransomware?

It is important to inform you that besides encrypting your files, the Ban virus will most likely deploy Vidar Stealer on your computer to get access to credentials to different accounts (including cryptocurrency wallets). That program can extract your credentials from your browser’s auto-filling data.

How сan I avoid ransomware injection?

Ban ransomware doesn’t have a superpower, so as any similar malware.

You can defend your computer from its infiltration taking three easy steps:

• Ignore any letters from unknown senders with strange addresses, or with content that has likely no connection to something you are expecting (how can you win in a money prize draw without even taking part in it?). In case the email subject is more or less something you are expecting, scrutinize all elements of the dubious letter carefully. A hoax letter will always have mistakes.
• Never use cracked or untrusted programs. Trojan viruses are often spreaded as a part of cracked software, most likely under the guise of “patch” to prevent the license check. Understandably, untrusted programs are very hard to tell from trustworthy software, as trojans sometimes have the functionality you need. You can try to find information on this software product on the anti-malware message boards, but the optimal way is not to use such software.

Frequently Asked Questions

🤔 How can I open “.BaN” files?Can I somehow access “.BaN” files?

There’s no way to do it, unless the files “.BaN” files are decrypted.

🤔 The encrypted files are very important to me. How can I decrypt them quickly?

Hopefully, you have made a copy of those important files. In case you haven’t, there is still a chance that you do have a Restore Point from some time ago to roll back the whole system to the moment when it had no virus yet, but already had your files. The rest of the methods require patience.

🤔 What to do if the Ban malware has blocked my computer and I can’t get the activation code.

🤔 What can I do right now?

Many of the encrypted files might still be at your disposal

• If you sent or received your important files through email, you could still download them from your online mailbox.
• You might have shared photographs or videos with your friends or relatives. Simply ask them to give those pictures back to you.
• If you have initially downloaded any of your files from the Web, you can try doing it again.
• Your messengers, social networks pages, and cloud disks might have all those files as well.
• It might be that you still have the needed files on your old PC, a notebook, cellphone, external storage, etc.

USEFUL TIP: You can use data recovery utilities² to retrieve your lost information since ransomware blocks the copies of your files, deleting the original ones. In the video below, you can see how to use PhotoRec for such a restoration, but be advised: you can do it only after you remove the virus with an anti-malware program.

1. My files are encrypted by ransomware, what should I do now?
2. Here are Top 10 Data Recovery Software Of 2023.