Kaspersky ransomware Lab has additionally published 14,031 decryption keys that can Bitcryptor be used to unlock personal files encrypted by CoinVault and .
Cyber-security vendors first noticed CoinVault in May 2014. Since then, this aggressive ransomware that heavily encrypts data files on infected computers has claimed over 1,500 victims in more than 108 countries.
As Kaspersky Lab and other antivirus companies optimized their detection tools, the makers of CoinVault did the same until they released Bitcryptor, a second-generation CoinVault.
Their campaigns, while quite successful, have not kept them safe from law enforcement. Last September, after a collaborative investigation by Kaspersky Lab, Panda Labs, and the Dutch police, the CoinVault developers, two men from Amersfoort, Netherlands, were arrested by local police forces.
After the police managed to gain access to the cybercriminals' infrastructure, Kaspersky Lab were able to extract all remaining decryption keys from the C&C server and published them on the noransom.karspersky.com website.
Victims whose computers were infected by ransomware, if they still have encrypted files, can download the decryption key (which they would only receive if they had paid the ransom to the attackers) and unlock their files.
It can of course be somewhat slow for some of the users, who deleted all of their encrypted files because they could not regain access to them and at the same time were taking up space on their hard drive.
