New CryptoHost Ransomware Spotted in the Wild (Aug 23, 2016).

The Dell Sonicwall Threats Research team observed reports of a new Ransomware family Named CryptoHost actively spreading in the wild.

The Malware encrypts all files on the victim's machine with a password protected Rar archive.

Infection Cycle:

The Malware uses the following icons:

The Malware adds the following files to the system:

• CryptoHost.exe

  • %Userprofile%Application Datacryptohost.exe

  • %Userprofile%Application Dataprocessor.exe

• processor.exe

  • C:Documents.rar

The Trojan adds the following keys to the Windows registry to ensure persistence upon reboot:

• HKCUSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionRunsoftware

  • %Userprofile%Application Datacryptohost.exe

The Malware runs following commands on the system:

Once the computer is compromised, the malware copies its own executable file to %Userprofile% Application Data folder and creates another process named Processor.exe.

The Malware encrypts the victims files with a strong Rar encryption algorithm until the victim pays a fee to get them back.

After encrypting all the personal documents and files it shows the following picture:

It demands that victims pay using Bitcoin in order to receive the decryption key that allows them to recover their files. The malware has some guidelines for how to purchase Bitcoins:

We have been monitoring varying hits over the past few days for the signature that blocks this threat:

SonicWALL Gateway AntiVirus provides protection against this threat via the following signature:

• GAV: Filecoder.A_118 (Trojan)