How to delete Council of Europe virus - The Council of Europe virus removal guides

Can't delete Council of Europe virus? learn how to get rid of it in this article.

What is Council of Europe Virus? 

Council of Europe message warns that “Internet access is temporarily blocked” due to some copyright breaches. It is categorized as browser ransomware more specifically and is actually Trojan-Ransom.Win32.Linkup supportive. With filched interface and some legal terminologies, Council of Europe virus has been able to ask victims to do what it asks – fill up a form concerning credit card information with an excuse of Identity verification. With the excuse, 0.01EUR is claimed to be deducted from the credit card but returned later to paralyze victims and convince that Council of Europe warning message is authentic.

What Council of Europe Virus Aims

Council of Europe virus shares the same purpose with the earliest ancestor – FBI MoneyPak virus, which is money. The constant breaking news about the value of BitCoin keeps climbing up steeply make cyber criminals to start collecting BitCoin. But to cover up its real purpose in an attempt to lead victims into its trap, Council of Europe does not ask for BitCoin directly. Instead, Council of Europe virus connect “Bitcoin mining” botnet as soon as it compromises a machine and start to mine BitCoins without knowledge.

Apart from using “Bitcoin mining” botnet, Council of Europe can also make more money by simply reselling credit card information or system information to some spammers who requires an account for money laundry or configuration information for easy infiltration.

Destructive Council of Europe Virus

Though information security matters the most, people should also draw attentions to some mechanical damages that Council of Europe virus makes. The below damages are not what Council of Europe virus intends; however, they are necessary to guarantee that the access from “Bitcoin mining” botnet and its working:

1. Access to some forms of Safe Mode could be denied.
2. Restore points are destroyed along with system repair and system restore functions.
3. Some hot keys and key combinations such as Ctrl+Alt+Del and F8 will not respond.
4. Restarts will not drive away Council of Europe virus.

To safeguard your identity, information and retrieve a functional machine, it is advisable to follow the below steps and remove Council of Europe virus. Extra carefulness and some professional computer knowledge is required to self help as some modifications will be made in kernel part of a machine.

Self-help Instruction to Remove Council of Europe Virus

Step One – access Registry Editor to remove values generated by Council of Europe virus.

1. Hold down Win key and R key on the keyboard to bring up Run box (Windows 8 users can find Run in All Apps).
   
2. Put in“regedit” and hit Enter key to remove the following entries and values associated with Council of Europe virus:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTWindowFiles\Check_Associations
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREClientsStartMenuInternetINTEXPLORE.pif\ToP
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionRun\[random numbers and letters]
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTCLSID{random numbers} shellOpenHomePageCommand.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

Step Two – unveil all hidden items to remove everything related to Council of Europe virus and the counterfeit ones verisimilar to system items.

Windows 7/XP/Vista

1. Access ‘Control Panel’ from Start Menu and click open “user accounts and family safety”.
2. Select ‘Folder Options’ to open it up and tick ‘Show hidden files and folders’ then non-tick ‘Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)’ under View tab.
   

Windows 8

1. Access Windows Explorer from either All Apps or Start Screen  and go to View tab.
2. Tick ‘File name extensions’ and ‘Hidden items’ to show hidden items.
   

File to Delete:

1. navigate to C: Windows, to find out any file/ folder with the name of ‘Sys’ followed by random letters and figures. For example: C:SysDayN6.
   a. Double click on Computer/ My Computer and get into C Disk/ local disk.
   b. Hit the search icon  right above the address bar.
   c. Enter ‘Sys’ in the blank of ‘ALL or part of the file name’ and select C Disk in the ‘Look in’ column.
   d. Hit Search.
2. Remove C:\Windows\system32\command.com that was created on the day when Council of Europe virus emerged.
3. Navigate to Roaming folder and Temp folder under local disk to remove items named after random numbers and letters.

Residual Damages by Council of Europe Virus

As stated in the preceding paragraphs that Council of Europe virus is geared by a Trojan. When Council of Europe virus worms in a system through bugs/vulnerability/loophole/backdoor, drivers concerning security utilities and relevant services will be numerated to be overwritten with vicious codes. Further manipulations can thus be made deep in a system:

1. Council of Europe virus puts its codes into boot sectors to ensure that it runs right before Windows every time.
2. Startup items of Council of Europe virus will be injected into related entries to make sure that the counterfeit warning and “Bitcoin mining” botnet will continue to work.
3. .dat, .dll and .exe files will be embedded into Windows files to record keystrokes so that the input information will be collected.

Be noted that such modifications would certainly form vulnerability. What’s worse, supported by Trojan, Council of Europe virus manages to open up backdoor for the communications between the compromised machine and remote server; coupled with disabled security service, the blocked machine becomes susceptible to infections. That’s why many more victims start to be encountered with residual damages even after removing Council of Europe virus:

1. More infections are found by installed anti-virus programs such as Win64:Dropper-Gen[Drp].
2. Browser hijacking and redirecting issues could be caught in sight and cannot be eradicated.
3. Computer is running slowly with a significantly consumed CPU.
4. Error messages would pop up from time to time reporting that something is missing or corrupt.
5. Surfing experience can be ruined by endless pop-up adware.

Actually, the earlier the Council of Europe virus removal is, the less the problem will occur. Therefore, it is highly recommended to remove Council of Europe virus upon its detection.