{"id":236116,"date":"2026-04-29T06:14:32","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T11:14:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/vect-2-0-ransomware-irreversibly-destroys-files-over-131kb-on-windows-linux-esxi"},"modified":"2026-04-29T06:14:32","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T11:14:32","slug":"vect-2-0-ransomware-irreversibly-destroys-files-over-131kb-on-windows-linux-esxi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/vect-2-0-ransomware-irreversibly-destroys-files-over-131kb-on-windows-linux-esxi","title":{"rendered":"VECT 2.0 Ransomware Irreversibly Destroys Files Over 131KB on Windows, Linux, ESXi"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/vect-2-0-ransomware-irreversibly-destroys-files-over-131kb-on-windows-linux-esxi.gif\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Threat hunters are warning that the cybercriminal operation known as <strong>VECT 2.0<\/strong> acts more like a wiper than a ransomware due to a critical flaw in its encryption implementation across Windows, Linux, and ESXi variants that renders recovery impossible even for the threat actors.<\/p>\n<p>The fact that VECT\u2019s locker <a href=\"https:\/\/research.checkpoint.com\/2026\/vect-ransomware-by-design-wiper-by-accident\/\">permanently destroys large files<\/a> rather than encrypting them means even victims who opt to pay the ransom cannot get their data back, as the decryption keys are discarded by the malware during the time encryption occurs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cVECT is being marketed as ransomware, but for any file over 131KB \u2013 which is most of what enterprises actually care about \u2013 it functions as a data destruction tool,\u201d Eli Smadja, group manager at Check Point Research, said in a statement shared with The Hacker News.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Threat hunters are warning that the cybercriminal operation known as VECT 2.0 acts more like a wiper than a ransomware due to a critical flaw in its encryption implementation across Windows, Linux, and ESXi variants that renders recovery impossible even for the threat actors. The fact that VECT\u2019s locker permanently destroys large files rather than [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,1625],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-236116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cybercrime-malcode","category-encryption"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}