Trojan.Oshidor

The Trojan.Oshidor was first detected in November of 2013. Trojan.Oshidor is used to take over a computer, encrypting the victim's files and taking the affected computer hostage. Trojan.Oshidor is part of a large family of ransomware infections that follow similar attack patterns. Essentially, Trojan.Oshidor is designed to search for files in certain popular file formats ranging from images to documents created with many widely used applications. Trojan.Oshidor then encrypts these files and saves them with the extension OSHIT, deleting the original. This is part of a tactic meant to force inexperienced computer users into paying hefty ransoms in order to gain access to their computer.

If you are experiencing problems related to Trojan.Oshidor, security researchers strongly recommend the use of a dedicated anti-malware program to remove Trojan.Oshidor from your computer. It is usually possible to recover your files without resorting to paying Trojan.Oshidor's ransom. One strong reason for avoiding the payment of the Trojan.Oshidor ransom is that paying money to remove Trojan.Oshidor enables the criminals responsible for Trojan.Oshidor to continue promoting their threats and creating other types of threats.

Trojan.Oshidor is in Reality a Ransomware

Trojan.Oshidor is designed to take the victim's files hostage and then demand a ransom. First, Trojan.Oshidor makes changes to the affected computer's settings that allow Trojan.Oshidor to run automatically, connect to a remote party and prevent some Windows features such as the System Restore or the Registry Editor from running. Once Trojan.Oshidor has been installed, Trojan.Oshidor connects with a remote server and generates a fifteen character encryption key. Trojan.Oshidor then proceeds to detect all files on the affected hard drive that belong to on a long list of popular file extensions. Trojan.Oshidor encrypts all of these files using the encryption key Trojan.Oshidor generated and a relatively simple encryption algorithm. Trojan.Oshidor then saves the encrypted file with the extension OSHIT and deletes the original. So, for example, encrypting a file named document.txt, Trojan.Oshidor will delete document.txt and replace it with document.oshit. Trojan.Oshidor displays a pop-up message threatening the victim and demanding that the victim enter a password to encrypt the files on the infected computer.