Prince Ransomware (.BLACK File) Removal

Black filesbelongs to the Prince ransomware family. This is harmful program that encrypts some files on your computer (images, text files, excel tables, music, videos, etc) and appends its own extension to every file, leaving the Decryption Instructions.txt text files in each folder which contains the encrypted files.

What is known about the Black virus?

☝️ Black virus is a Prince ransomware-type malicious agent.

Black will add its extra .black extension to the name of every encrypted file. For example, a file named “photo.jpg” will be renamed to “photo.jpg.black”. Just like the Excel table with the name “table.xlsx” will be altered to “table.xlsx.black”, and so on.

In each directory that contains the encrypted files, a Decryption Instructions.txt text file will be found. It is a ransom money note. It contains information about the ways of contacting the racketeers and some other information. The ransom note usually contains instructions on how to buy the decryption tool from the racketeers. You can obtain this decoding tool after contacting @williamwestcoast (Telegram) by email. That is how they do it.

Black Summary:

The Decryption Instructions.txt document accompanying the Black ransomware states the following:

---------- Black Ransomware ----------
Your files have been encrypted using Black Ransomware!
They can only be decrypted by paying us a ransom in cryptocurrency.


Encrypted files have the .black extension.
IMPORTANT: Do not modify or rename encrypted files, as they may become unrecoverable.


Contact us on telegram to discuss payment.
@williamwestcoast
---------- Black Ransomware ----------

In the image below, you can see what a folder with files encrypted by the Black looks like. Each filename has the “.black” extension appended to it.

How did Black ransomware end up on my PC?

There are plenty of possible ways of ransomware injection.

There are currently three most exploited methods for tamperers to have the Black virus planted in your digital environment. These are email spam, Trojan introduction and peer-to-peer file transfer.

• If you access your mailbox and see emails that look just like notifications from utility services providers, delivery agencies like FedEx, web-access providers, and whatnot, but whose mailer is strange to you, be wary of opening those emails. They are very likely to have a malware file enclosed in them. So it is even riskier to download any attachments that come with emails like these.
• Another thing the hackers might try is a Trojan horse model. A Trojan is an object that infiltrates into your machine disguised as something else. For example, you download an installer of some program you want or an update for some service. But what is unboxed turns out to be a harmful agent that corrupts your data. As the update file can have any title and any icon, you’d better be sure that you can trust the resource of the things you’re downloading. The best way is to trust the software companies’ official websites.
• As for the peer file transfer protocols like BitTorrent or eMule, the threat 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 reasonable to scan the folder 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 important to inform you that besides encrypting your data, the Black virus will most likely install Vidar Stealer on your PC to get access to credentials to different accounts (including cryptocurrency wallets). That program can derive your logins and passwords from your browser’s auto-filling cardfile.

How to avoid ransomware infiltration?

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

You can defend your system from ransomware attack in several easy steps:

• Never open any emails from unknown senders with unknown addresses, or with content that has nothing to do with something you are waiting for (how can you win in a lottery without participating in it?). If the email subject is more or less something you are waiting for, check all elements of the questionable email carefully. A fake email will surely have mistakes.
• Never use cracked or untrusted software. Trojan viruses are often shared as a part of cracked software, most likely 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 about this program on the anti-malware forums, but the best solution is not to use such programs at all.

FAQ

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

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

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

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. There are other ways to beat ransomware, but they take time.

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

🤔 And what should I do now?

Some of the blocked data can be found elsewhere.

• If you sent or received your important files by email, you could still download them from your online mail server.
• You might have shared images or videos with your friends or relatives. Just ask them to give those pictures back to you.
• If you have initially downloaded any of your files from the Internet, you can try to do it again.
• Your messengers, social media pages, and cloud storage might have all those files as well.
• Maybe you still have the needed files on your old computer, a laptop, mobile, flash memory, etc.

USEFUL TIP: You can employ file recovery programs² to get your lost data back since ransomware encodes the copies of your files, removing the authentic ones. In the tutorial 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 are Top 10 Data Recovery Software Of 2024.