New Jigsaw ransomware wants to play a game

A new ransomware has popped up that wants to play a game with you. This nasty program, clearly inspired by the Saw movie franchise, locks users out of their files and then demands $150 worth of Bitcoins to set things right. But there’s a catch – unless you can cough up the cash, it will start deleting files until it completely obliterates your system entirely.

Among all the other ransomware that threatens to delete your files, It seems like Jigsaw is the first one that actually carries out its threat.

If a user contracts the malware, a picture of Jigsaw will appear on your screen and state that he has encrypted every photo, video and document on the system. An hour long countdown begins, after which, the digital killer explains that he will start deleting files forever.

Restarting the program does not work, neither does rebooting your machine, in fact this makes the problem worse. Left to its own devices, the program will delete only one file after the first hour. If you try to reboot however, the program will destroy 1000 files. Over time, the program will delete more and more files in a geometric progression until, after 72 hours, it will delete everything!

To stop the process before it destroys all your precious files, the ransomware demands $150 in Bitcoin – the currency that cybercriminals love to use – at which point everything will apparently return to normal. It’s not clear exactly what “everything” means. Whether your computer will function afterwards or if the ransomware goes away is unknown.

The good news is that a fix has been developed. If you’ve been targeted by Jigsaw, you can get rid of him with a handy decryption algorithm and an antivirus scan. If you have lost files, it may be hard to retrieve them unless you know exactly which ones have disappeared.

The bad news is that it is not clear where the ransomware comes from, or how users contracted it in the first place. As always, the best thing to do is to steer clear of shady websites and to not open email attachments you aren’t expecting, as well as keeping a security suite running at all times.

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