Mystic Ransomware Removal Guide

Do you know what Mystic Ransomware is?

Mystic Ransomware can hit your computer hard and without the possibility to recover your files after this malicious attack. We do not believe that the cyber criminals behind this attack would send you the decryption key anyway even if you were to pay. Still, our researchers have found that this ransomware could be an old one still resurfacing and infecting but there is no way for you to transfer the ransom fee and receive your key since the related website has been shut down. So practically, this infection does not generate any easy money for its creators; it is possible that it lives its own life now on the web. But this makes it even more dangerous because there is no chance for you to acquire the decryption key without which it is impossible for you to recover your files. If you are a security-minded user, it is possible that you have a backup saved on a removable drive or in cloud storage so you can actually recover at least some of your encrypted files this way. All in all, we advise you to act now and remove Mystic Ransomware from your PC. For more detail, please continue reading our report.

According to our researchers, the most likely way for this ransomware program to be able to infiltrate your system is to come in a spam e-mail. This is the method that most cyber criminals tend to use, although there are a couple of other channels, too. You may get an e-mail that seems to come from the local police claiming that you have not paid for a fine (e.g., speeding ticket) or any well-known company (e.g., American Airlines, FedEx, and AOL) with some issue with your credit card details, or any important information that you can only access if you open this mail and view its attachment. Basically, this attached file is the key to this dangerous infection since once you click on it to see it, you initiate this malicious attack. You will have no time to stop encryption even if you delete Mystic Ransomware as soon as you realize its presence. The most likely scenario is that you will only notice it when the whole encryption process is over. This obviously means that removing Mystic Ransomware from your computer will not recover your files and you may lose them all if you do not have a backup somewhere safe.Mystic Ransomware Removal GuideMystic Ransomware screenshot
Scroll down for full removal instructions

We also need to mention the possibility that such an infection may also be spread via malicious webpages armed with Exploit Kits. Such pages are designed to drop such threats as soon as the page loads in your browser. Therefore, it is enough for you to click on a corrupted link or an unsafe third-party advertisement, and you could be redirected to such a malicious page in no time. By the time you realize that a new tab opened with a suspicious page and you would want to close it, your computer could probably be infected already. This can mostly happen when your browsers and drivers (Adobe Flash Player and Java) are not up-to-date since such Exploit Kits can only take advantage of older software versions that have known security bugs. Obviously, it is essential for you to keep all your programs updated regularly to be able to avoid such nightmares.

Our tests cannot confirm which encryption method is used by this malware infection. This threat does target your personal files as usual; however, our sample only encrypted files in the "%USERPROFILE%" folder and its subfolders. We have also found that this infection does not change the file names and does not append a new extension either. Clearly, this makes it more difficult to detect and identify this particular ransomware infection. It creates a ransom note file on your system "creatively" called "ransom.txt. " This file contains important information about your current situation and how you can acquire the decryption key to recover your encrypted files. However, this information is not to your advantage really as the website you have to visit to pay the ransom fee does not seem to function any longer. Even if you wanted to pay, it is impossible now; and, at the same time, you will not get your decryption key either. Let us emphasize here that we would never advise you to pay this fee anyway. Such technical issues can emerge any time and cyber criminals are not the kind anyway that would really care to send you the decryption key. All in all, we believe that it is important that you remove Mystic Ransomware from your system as soon as possible.

Since this ransomware does not seem to lock your screen or block your main system processes, you can simply delete the related files from your system to eliminate this danger. Please note that this will not give your encrypted files back but it is still the right thing to do if you ever want to use your computer again. We have prepared a general guide for you that you can use to clean your system of this threat; however, you may want to protect your PC against future malicious attacks. Therefore, we suggest that you install a trustworthy anti-malware application, such as SpyHunter that can automatically detect and eliminate all existing malware threats.

Remove Mystic Ransomware from Windows

  1. Press Win+E.
  2. Scan your download folders (e.g., Desktop, %Temp%, and Downloads folders) and delete all suspicious files you may have downloaded lately.
  3. Delete "ransom.txt", the ransom note file.
  4. Empty your Recycle Bin and reboot your system.

In non-techie terms:

Mystic Ransomware is definitely not a new threat that can take your personal files hostage until you pay the ransom fee. As a matter of fact, our researches believe that this ransomware infection has been around for a while based on the fact that its ransom note demands 1.01 Bitcoins, which seems to equal 280 US dollars; however, right now this is rather 4,241 USD. Another worrisome fact is that the website provided by these crooks in the ransom note to visit is actually dead so you have no way to transfer the fee or to receive your decryption key either. This is bad news because unless you have a backup, there is no way for you to recover your files. Of course, we do not advise anyone to transfer any money to such cyber criminals. The only thing you can do to restore your system is to remove Mystic Ransomware right now. But keep in mind that this will not restore your encrypted files. If you would like to keep your PC secure, we suggest that you install a trustworthy anti-malware program as soon as possible.