What is a .ADOBE file?
A file that ends in .ADOBE is a file that has been locked by a harmful computer program called Dharma ransomware. This is not something made by the Adobe company, which makes software for creating and editing documents and images. Instead, it's a tool used by people who want to steal money. They use this ransomware to change your files so you can't open them anymore, and then they ask you to pay them to get your files back.
The way it works is pretty sneaky. The bad software, or malware, finds the files on your computer, like your videos (.MP4), documents (.DOCX), and PDFs (.PDF), and changes their names by adding ".ADOBE" at the end. But it's not just a simple name change. The malware also scrambles the contents of these files using complicated math (AES and RSA ciphers), making it impossible to just rename them back to get them to work again.
The people behind this ransomware are basically kidnapping your files and asking for a ransom, usually in bitcoin, a type of digital money, to give them back to you. They often sneak this malware onto your computer by hiding it in something that looks safe, like an email attachment or a download from the internet. Once you accidentally start it, it quickly locks all your files and then tells you what happened through a note (like FILES ENCRYPTED.txt or _openme.txt) that explains how you can pay them to unlock your files.
The locked files get a new name that looks something like this: yourfile.pdf becomes yourfile.pdf.id-123ABC.[hackersemail@badguys.com].adobe. This naming pattern helps the criminals keep track of their victims.
Unfortunately, you can't just open these .ADOBE files normally because they're encrypted. The only suggested way to possibly get your files back without paying the ransom is by using a system restore, if you have a backup of your files from before they were encrypted.
These .ADOBE files started becoming a big problem around the end of 2018 and the beginning of 2019, and they're similar to other ransomware files like .LOCKY and .WALLET. It's a serious issue because it targets your personal or work files, making them inaccessible and potentially causing a lot of stress and loss.
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