BIDON Ransomware 🔐 (.PUUUK Files) — How to Remove?

The Bidon virus belongs to the MONTI ransomware family. Malware of this type encrypts all the data on your computer (photos, text files, excel tables, music, videos, etc) and appends its own extension to every file, creating the readme.txt text files in every folder which contains the encrypted files.

Bidon virus: what is known so far?

☝️ Bidon is a MONTI family ransomware malicious agent.

Bidon adds its extra .PUUUK extension to every file’s name. For example, a file entitled “photo.jpg” will be renamed to “photo.jpg.PUUUK”. Likewise, the Excel file with the name “table.xlsx” will become “table.xlsx.PUUUK”, and so on.

In every folder containing the encoded files, a readme.txt text document will be found. It is a ransom money memo. Therein you can find information on the ways of contacting the racketeers and some other remarks. The ransom note most probably contains instructions on how to buy the decryption tool from the tamperers. You can get this decryptor after contacting Tor website through email. That is it.

Bidon Overview:

The readme.txt document accompanying the Bidon malware provides the following dispiriting information:

All of your files are currently encrypted by BIDON strain. If you don\'t know who we are - just \"Google it.\"


As you already know, all of your data has been encrypted by our software.
It cannot be recovered by any means without contacting our team directly.


DON\'T TRY TO RECOVER your data by yourselves. Any attempt to recover your data (including the usage of the additional recovery software) can damage your files. However,
if you want to try - we recommend choosing the data of the lowest value.


DON\'T TRY TO IGNORE us. We\'ve downloaded a pack of your internal data and are ready to publish it on our news website if you do not respond.
So it will be better for both sides if you contact us as soon as possible.


DON\'T TRY TO CONTACT feds or any recovery companies.
We have our informants in these structures, so any of your complaints will be immediately directed to us.
So if you will hire any recovery company for negotiations or send requests to the police/FBI/investigators, we will consider this as a hostile intent and initiate the publication of whole compromised data immediately.


To prove that we REALLY CAN get your data back - we offer you to decrypt two random files completely free of charge.


You can contact our team directly for further instructions through our website :


TOR VERSION :
(you should download and install TOR browser first hxxps://torproject.org)


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Also visit our blog (via Tor):
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YOU SHOULD BE AWARE!
We will speak only with an authorized person. It can be the CEO, top management, etc.
In case you are not such a person - DON\'T CONTACT US! Your decisions and action can result in serious harm to your company!
Inform your supervisors and stay calm!

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

How did Bidon ransomware end up on my PC?

There are many possible ways of ransomware injection.

Nowadays, there are three most popular methods for evil-doers to have the Bidon virus working in your system. These are email spam, Trojan infiltration and peer file transfer.

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

Another option for ransom hunters is a Trojan file model. A Trojan is a program that infiltrates into your computer disguised as something legal. Imagine, you download an installer for some program you need or an update for some program. However, what is unpacked reveals itself a harmful agent that encodes your data. Since the installation wizard can have any title and any icon, you’d better be sure that you can trust the source of the things you’re downloading. The best thing is to trust the software developers’ official websites.

As for the peer-to-peer file transfer protocols like torrents or eMule, the threat 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 resources. Also, it is a good idea to scan the directory containing the downloaded items with the anti-malware utility as soon as the downloading is done.

How do I get rid of ransomware?

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

How do I avert ransomware attack?

Bidon ransomware doesn’t have a endless power, neither does any similar malware.

You can armour your computer from its infiltration within several easy steps:

• Never open any emails from unknown senders with unknown addresses, or with content that has likely no connection to something you are expecting (how can you win in a lottery without participating in it?). If the email subject is more or less something you are expecting, scrutinize all elements of the suspicious letter carefully. A hoax email will always contain mistakes.
• Do not use cracked or untrusted programs. Trojans are often spreaded as an element of cracked products, most likely as a “patch” which prevents the license check. But untrusted programs are very hard to distinguish from reliable ones, because trojans sometimes have the functionality you need. You can try to find information about this software product on the anti-malware message boards, but the optimal solution is not to use such software.

FAQ

🤔 How can I open “.PUUUK” files?Is it possible to open“.PUUUK” files?

Negative. That is why ransomware is so frustrating. Until you decode the “.PUUUK” files you will not be able to access them.

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

If the “.PUUUK” files contain some really important information, then you probably have them backed up. 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. There are other ways to beat ransomware, but they take time.

🤔 What to do if the Bidon ransomware has blocked my PC and I can’t get the activation key.

🤔 And what should I do now?

Some of the encrypted files can be found elsewhere.

• If you exchanged your critical files through email, you could still download them from your online mail server.
• You may have shared images or videos with your friends or relatives. Simply ask them to send those pictures back to you.
• If you have initially got any of your files from the Web, you can try doing it again.
• Your messengers, social media pages, and cloud storage might have all those files too.
• Maybe you still have the needed files on your old computer, a notebook, phone, flash memory, etc.

HINT: You can use file recovery programs² to get your lost data back since ransomware encodes 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 eradicate the virus with an antivirus program.

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