KNIGHT Virus 🔐 (.KNIGHT_L Files) — How to Remove?

The Knight virus falls under the ransomware type of malicious agent. Malware of this type encrypts all the data on your computer (images, text files, excel sheets, audio files, videos, etc) and appends its extra extension to every file, leaving the How To Restore Your Files.txt files in each directory which contains the encrypted files.

What is known about the Knight virus?

Knight will append its specific .knight_l extension to every file’s title. For example, an image entitled “photo.jpg” will be renamed to “photo.jpg.knight_l”. Likewise, the Excel sheet named “table.xlsx” will be renamed to “table.xlsx.knight_l”, and so forth.

In every folder that contains the encrypted files, a How To Restore Your Files.txt text document will be found. It is a ransom money memo. It contains information about the ways of paying the ransom and some other remarks. The ransom note usually contains a description of how to buy the decryption tool from the racketeers. You can obtain this decryptor after contacting [email protected] by email. That is basically the scheme of the malefaction.

Knight Summary:

The How To Restore Your Files.txt document coming in package with the Knight malware states the following:

All your documents, company files, images, etc (and there are a lot of company data) have been encrypted and the extension has been changed to .knight_l .


The recovery is only possible with our help.


US $5000 in Bitcoin is the price for restoring all of your data. This is the average monthly wage for 1 employee in your company. So don\'t even think about negotiating. That would only be a waste of time and you will be ignored.


Send the Bitcoin to this wallet:14JJfrWQbud8c8KECHyc9jM6dammyjUb3Z   (This is your only payment address, please don\'t pay BTC to other than this or you won\'t be able to get it decrypted!)


After completing the Bitcoin transaction, send an email at: - (Download and install TOR Browser (hxxps://www.torproject.org/).[If you don\'t know how to use it, do a Google search!]).You will get an answer as soon as possible.

 

I expect a message from you with the transfer of BTC Confirmation (TXID). So we can move forward to decrypt all your data. TXID is very important because it will help us identify your payment and connect it to your encrypted data.Do not use that I am here to waste mine or your time.


How to buy the BTC?


hxxps://www.binance.com/en/how-to-buy/bitcoin


hxxps://www.coinbase.com/how-to-buy/bitcoin


Note:


Your data are uploaded to our servers before being encrypted,


Everything related to your business (customer data, POS Data, documents related to your orders and delivery, and others).


If you do not contact us and do not confirm the payment within 4 days, we will move forward and will announce the sales of the extracted data.


ID: -

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

How did Knight ransomware end up on my PC?

There are plenty of possible ways of ransomware injection.

Nowadays, there are three most exploited methods for evil-doers to have ransomware working in your digital environment. These are email spam, Trojan injection and peer file transfer.

• If you open your inbox and see emails that look just like notifications from utility services providers, postal agencies like FedEx, Internet providers, and whatnot, but whose mailer is unknown to you, beware of opening those emails. They are very likely to have a malware file attached to them. Therefore, it is even riskier to download any attachments that come with emails like these.
• Another thing the hackers might try is a Trojan virus model. A Trojan is an object 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 unboxed turns out to be a harmful program that corrupts your data. As the installation package can have any name and any icon, you’d better be sure that you can trust the resource of the things you’re downloading. The best thing is to use the software developers’ official websites.
• As for the peer file transfer protocols like BitTorrent 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. So you’d better be using trustworthy websites. Also, it is a good idea to scan the directory containing the downloaded files with the antivirus as soon as the downloading is done.

How to remove ransomware?

It is crucial to note that besides encrypting your data, the Knight virus will probably install Vidar Stealer on your PC to seize your credentials to various accounts (including cryptocurrency wallets). That spyware can derive your logins and passwords from your browser’s auto-filling cardfile.

How do I avoid ransomware injection?

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

You can armour your system from ransomware infiltration in several easy steps:

• Ignore any letters from unknown mailers 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 more or less something you are waiting for, check all elements of the suspicious email with caution. A hoax email will always contain a mistake.
• Avoid using cracked or unknown programs. Trojan viruses are often spreaded as an element of cracked software, most likely as a “patch” preventing the license check. But potentially dangerous programs are very hard to distinguish from trustworthy software, because trojans may also have the functionality you seek. You can try to find information about this program on the anti-malware message boards, but the optimal way is not to use such programs at all.

FAQ

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

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

🤔 What should I do to make my files accessible as fast as possible?

Hopefully, you have made a copy of those important files. 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 to do if the Knight 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 within your reach

• If you sent or received your critical files through email, you could still download them from your online mailbox.
• You may have shared photographs or videos with your friends or family members. Just ask them to send those images back to you.
• If you have initially got any of your files from the Internet, you can try downloading them again.
• Your messengers, social media pages, and cloud disks might have all those files as well.
• It might be that you still have the needed files on your old computer, a laptop, cellphone, external storage, etc.

HINT: You can use data recovery utilities¹ to get your lost data back since ransomware arrests the copies of your files, removing the authentic ones. In the video below, you can learn how to recover your files with PhotoRec, but remember: you won’t be able to do it before you remove the virus with an antivirus program.

1. Here’s the list of Top 10 Data Recovery Software Of 2023.