The victims of the latest variants of the GandCrab ransomware have reason to be happy as a free decryption tool is now on hand for them.

The tool, released on the NoMoreRansom website, provides victims with the leeway to regain access to files that have been encoded with versions 5 to 5.2 of the ransomware, in addition to versions 1 and 4.

Highly successful, the GandCrab Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) has seen swift progress, with the adoption of NSA-linked EternalBlue exploit last year, and regular updates.

A few months ago, the threat was detected directing at a Japanese manufacturing firm, though it has invariably targeted mostly end-users.

Earlier this month, the GandCrab developers announced that they have decided to close shop and that the whole procedure would shut down at the end of June.

They also claimed to have made over $150 million per year, out of over $2 billion in revenue that the RaaS has produced for the cybercriminals involved in the scheme.

With a decryptor available for the latest alternates of the ransomware, which have been last used by cybercriminals, victims will be able to retrieve their data even if the hackers erase the decryption keys after the operation ends.

Europol says that previously released decryption tools for the GandCrab ransomware have helped over 30, 000 victims recover their data, which led to approximately $50 million in unpaid ransoms.

The European agency also observes that the combined efforts to build such decryptors have undermined the operators’ position and finally led to the closure of the operation by law enforcement, assisted by security companies Bitdefender and McAfee.

Europol also notes that the GandCrab operators probably subjected over 1.5 million victims worldwide to this ransomware.

“GandCrab prioritizes ransomed information and sets individual pricing by type of victim. An average computer costs from $600 and $2,000 to decrypt, and a server decryption costs $10,000 and more. While helping victims with decryption, we’ve seen ransom notes asking for as much as $700,000, which is quite a price for one wrong click,” Bitdefender’s Bogdan Botezatu notes.

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