HEALTH Virus Files of Ransomware — How to remove virus?

The Health virus falls within the ransomware type of malicious agent. It belongs to Phobos ransomware family. A harmful program of this type encrypts all user’s data on the computer (images, documents, excel sheets, music, videos, etc) and adds its specific extension to every file, leaving the info.txt files in every directory which contains the encrypted files.

What is Health?

☝️ A strictly correct designation for the Health would be “a ransomware malicious agent”.

The pattern of renaming is this: id-*******.[email address].health. In the process of encryption, a file entitled, for example, “report.docx” will be changed to “report.docx.id[1E857D00-3289].[[email protected]].health”.

In each folder with the encrypted files, a info.txt text document will appear. 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 a description of how to buy the decryption tool from the tamperers. You can get this decoding tool after contacting [email protected] via email. That is basically the scheme of the felony.

Health abstract:

The info.txt document accompanying the Health malware states the following:

All your files have been encrypted!
All your files have been encrypted due to a security problem with your PC. If you want to restore them, write us to the e-mail: [email protected]
Write this ID in the title of your message 1E857D00-3289
Or text in the messenger Telegram: @Help24_7
You have to pay for decryption in Bitcoins. The price depends on how fast you write to us. After payment we will send you the tool that will decrypt all your files.
Free decryption as guarantee
Before paying you can send us up to 5 files for free decryption. The total size of files must be less than 4Mb (non archived), and files should not contain valuable information. (databases,backups, large excel sheets, etc.)
How to obtain Bitcoins
The easiest way to buy bitcoins is LocalBitcoins site. You have to register, click \'Buy bitcoins\', and select the seller by payment method and price.
hxxps://localbitcoins.com/buy_bitcoins
Also you can find other places to buy Bitcoins and beginners guide here:
hxxp://www.coindesk.com/information/how-can-i-buy-bitcoins/
Attention!
Do not rename encrypted files.
Do not try to decrypt your data using third party software, it may cause permanent data loss.
Decryption of your files with the help of third parties may cause increased price (they add their fee to our) or you can become a victim of a scam.

In the screenshot below, you can see what a folder with files encrypted by the Health looks like. Each filename has the “.id-*******.[email address].health” extension appended to it.

How did Health ransomware end up on my PC?

There are many possible ways of ransomware injection.

There are currently three most exploited ways for hackers to have the Health virus planted in your digital environment. These are email spam, Trojan introduction and peer-to-peer networks.

If you access your inbox and see emails that look like familiar notifications from utility services companies, delivery agencies like FedEx, web-access providers, and whatnot, but whose mailer is strange to you, beware of opening those letters. They are very likely to have a malicious item enclosed in them. Thus it is even more dangerous to open any attachments that come with letters like these.

As for the peer-to-peer file transfer protocols like torrents or eMule, the danger is that they are even more trust-based than the rest of the Internet. You can never guess what you download until you get it. So you’d better be using trustworthy websites. Also, it is reasonable to scan the folder containing the downloaded files with the antivirus as soon as the downloading is finished.

How do I get rid of the Health virus?

It is important to inform you that besides encrypting your data, the Health virus will probably deploy the Azorult Spyware on your machine to get access to credentials to different accounts (including cryptocurrency wallets). That spyware² can derive your logins and passwords from your browser’s auto-filling cardfile.

Sometimes racketeers would decrypt some of your files to prove that they do have the decryption program. Since Health virus is a relatively recent ransomware, anti-malware engineers have not yet found a way to reverse its work. However, the decoding instruments are constantly updated, so the solution may soon be available.

Of course, if the criminals do the job of encoding someone’s essential files, the hopeless person will probably fulfill their demands. Despite that, paying to criminals does not necessarily mean that you’re getting your files back. It is still dangerous. After receiving the ransom, the racketeers may send a wrong decryption code to the victim. There were reports of racketeers simply disappearing after getting the money without even writing back.

The best safety measure against ransomware is to have a system restore point or the copies of your essential files in the cloud storage or at least on an external disk. Of course, that might be insufficient. Your most important thing could be that one you were working on when it all started. Nevertheless, it is something. It is also advisable to scan your PC for viruses with the anti-malware utility after the OS is rolled back.

There are other ransomware products, besides Health, that work similarly. Examples of those are Maiv, Ccps, Yoqs, and some others. The two major differences between them and the Health are the ransom amount and the encoding method. The rest is almost identical: documents become blocked, their extensions altered, ransom notes emerge in each folder containing encrypted files.

Some lucky users were able to decrypt the blocked files with the aid of the free tools provided by anti-malware specialists. Sometimes the hackers accidentally send the decoding key to the victims in the ransom note. Such an extraordinary fail allows the user to restore the files. But naturally, one should never rely on such a chance. Remember, ransomware is a criminals’ tool to lay their hands on the money of their victims.

How to avert ransomware infiltration?

Health ransomware has no endless power, so as any similar malware.

You can protect yourself from its infiltration within several easy steps:

• Ignore 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?). In case the email subject is likely something you are expecting, check all elements of the questionable email with caution. A hoax letter will always contain mistakes.
• Never use cracked or unknown programs. Trojan viruses are often shared as a part of cracked products, possibly as a “patch” to prevent the license check. But potentially dangerous programs are difficult to distinguish from trustworthy ones, because trojans may also have the functionality you need. Try to find information on this program on the anti-malware message boards, but the best solution is not to use such programs at all.

Reasons why I would recommend GridinSoft³

Download Removal Tool.

Run the setup file.

Press “Install” button.

Once installed, Anti-Malware will automatically run.

Wait for the Anti-Malware scan to complete.

Click on “Clean Now”.

Frequently Asked Questions

🤔 Are the “.id-*******.[email address].health” files accessible?

Unfortunately, no. You need to decipher the “.id-*******.[email address].health” files first. Then you will be able to open them.

🤔 I really need to decrypt those “.id-*******.[email address].health” files ASAP. How can I do that?

It’s good if you have fаr-sightedly saved copies of these important files elsewhere. Otherwise, you might try to employ System Restore. The only question is whether you have saved any Restore Points that would be helpful now. All other solutions require time.

🤔 What should I do if the Health virus has blocked my computer and I can’t get the activation key.

🤔 What could help the situation right now?

Some of the encrypted files can be found elsewhere.

• If you exchanged your critical files by email, you could still download them from your online mailbox.
• You may have shared images or videos with your friends or relatives. Simply ask them to send those images 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 storage might have all those files as well.
• Maybe you still have the needed files on your old PC, a notebook, phone, memory stick, etc.

HINT: You can use file recovery programs⁵ to retrieve your lost information since ransomware blocks the copies of your files, deleting the original ones. In the tutorial below, you can see how to use PhotoRec for such a recovery, but be advised: you can do it only after you eradicate the ransomware itself with an anti-malware program.

Also, you can contact the following governmental fraud and scam sites to report this attack:

• In the United States: On Guard Online;
• In Canada: Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre;
• In the United Kingdom: Action Fraud;
• In Australia: SCAMwatch;
• In New Zealand: Consumer Affairs Scams;
• In France: Agence nationale de la sécurité des systèmes d’information;
• In Germany: Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik;
• In Ireland: An Garda Síochána;

To report the attack, you can contact local executive boards. For instance, if you live in USA, you can have a talk with FBI Local field office, IC3 or Secret Service.

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