What is Hairysquid ransomware?
Hairysquid is a harmful program (a virus) that falls under the ransomware classification. This category of viruses encrypt all files on the infected computer and demand money to decrypt them. Some of them also make additional threats, such as leaking your private information on the internet; Hairysquid ransomware, however, does not.
Most ransomware viruses rename the files they’ve encrypted, and Hairysquid is not an exception. Files encrypted by this virus have .Hairysquid file extension (which is where the name of the virus comes from). To illustrate, a file called “image.png” would be renamed to “image.png.Hairysquid”.
The virus also creates a text file called “READ_ME_DECRYPTION_HAIRYSQUID.txt”. This file is a ransom note; it contains the hackers’ demands and their contact information. You can read the text of the note on the image above. However, it is rather long, so we also wrote a summary.
The hackers do not tell the victim how much they will have to pay; they state that the price is based on how many “office files” were encrypted. But the note does say that they expect to be paid in BitCoin.
You should know, however, that paying the hackers is not your only option. Read the guide below to explore other ways to remove Hairysquid ransomware and decrypt .Hairysquid files.