Cryptolocker Randsomeware
 

Article:
https://blog.malwarebytes.org/intelligence/2013/10/cryptolocker-ransomware-what-you-need-to-know/

I never heard of this stuff before today when I went to pick up some ink from my computer guy.

Per his instructions I went to Costco and picked up a one terabyte USB back up drive for $64.00 (on sale till the fourth of this month).

Key to using the back up is opening up some files first to make sure they are not encrypted. If they are and you back up, you contaminate and encrypt your back up copies, which is a bad thing.

Maybe you cloud guys don't wory so much, was also told about copy.com.

Tell me what you know, I'm still learing about this. I cannot afford to lose all my data by encryption.

I was told that if you pay the randsome, they don't unlock you anyway.

Beware of phony FedEx and UPS tracking emails, that is how they first got around.

Really? People are still falling for fake UPS tracking emails? I realize not everyone is computer savvy, but to a large degree, if you're gullible enough to click on an attachment from an email that wasn't expected, you kind of deserve what's coming to you.

I posted a thread on this last month.

I have dropbox and copy.com accounts and for a variety of reasons prefer copy.

No one deserves it.

And they are getting trickier about it all the time.

Copy.com is much more generous with capacity as I understand it.

In this day and age, if you run a business and are not smart enough to protect your data (or hire someone to do it for you), you shouldn't be running a business.

I was using CD's but got behind when things got busy.

Years ago zip drives were the standard, that takes me back.

Look into Data at Rest encryption software. It's not at all difficult to use, and provides an additional layer of security.

The storage battle swings like a pendulum, today dropbox is more generous on the paid / higher tier accounts but tomorrow that may change again.

Copy has a better interface, much more user friendly.

If you are like me and have multiple email accounts used for/with different clients you can aggregate them all under one copy account. Drop requires you to have a separate email per drop account which for me means constantly logging out as A and logging back in B, C, D or E.

In terms of sharing data with others copy wins hands down.

with drop if you share 6 GB of data it takes 6 gb from your allocation as well as 6 gb from each person you share with. So if you shard with 2 people that's 18 gb.

With copy it's split by number of people sharing so each of those 3 from above only get hit with 2 gb each.

While that will protect your data from being stolen, I doubt it will protect against cryptolocker, and that system will simply encrypt the password encrypted file a second time. Kinda like zipping a zipped file a second time.

Nasty bugs these cyber criminals are coming up with these days...

-Z

I refuse to give these criminals anything... Another reason to back up your data and be diligent!

There's a young idiot at work that actually paid the ransom. They sent him the key and it worked but I have heard it often doesn't or it's never received.
All he had to do was back up his data at least once a week to avoid this.

And I've seen it encrypt network files... A lady at work just ignored the issue until our security guys flagged her LT because of what was happening on the servers.
They had to do a full restore to fix the damage. All of her data was lost. (over 10 years worth because she never did a back up, ever)

So why can't they find the people that write this stuff? Surely the payment leaves a trail.

Last I heard, they had the code for this and were able to unlock the locked files. Is that not the case?

No, they are up to version 3.0 no unlock, restore backup or pay ransom

Why do you people put up with Windows?

Cryptolocker Randsomeware
 

'Zactly.

I use a Mac and I have a Linux box that is standalone (local LAN only, no internet connection) where I keep the stuff I really care about. I also use time machine every few days. Have never, ever had an issue except for a stolen CC# (used to buy plane tickets in Russia) a few years ago - that was due to the CC company getting hacked (not me) and they didn't charge me when I contested it - the company offered a new card, I told them to keep it, closed my account and went on with life. It was a few years ago so I suspect they only got the CC# (if they'd gotten anything more I imagine it would have turned into nasty business by now, this was maybe 5-6 years ago). Thankfully I didn't (and don't) store my payment info. or it's possible they might've been able to go after my bank account.

Lesson: don't EVER store your payment information on anyone else's site or server and don't enroll in "auto pay" programs (since those necessarily keep your payment information on their servers, out of your control). Most companies now outsource their payment and data processing and the level of protection given to customer data in places like India or Bangladesh or Mexico or Vietnam won't be nearly as good as what's typically employed in the US (mostly due to liability concerns).

Another way to do it (if you're hell-bent on the "convenience" of auto-pay or saving your CC# info on other peoples' sites so you don't have to enter it every month) is to use a card with a very low limit or a debit card that you only transfer funds into to cover payments right before they post each month (although that might be as much or more work than simply manually entering the payment data in the first place unless you automate those transfers themselves I suppose...)

Or just have fewer accounts, fewer things to pay and worry about and live happier. :)

The biggest data crooks out there aren't Russian hackers anyway - they're big corporations with names like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Verizon and Yahoo.

Private browsing, cookie blocking, Little Snitch and similar tools are your friend. If they want your data make it very difficult / expensive for them to get it, and make sure that even if they do, it's of little or no value as a profile. THAT is your best (really"only") protection against the Big Data crooks.

Huh? Can you clarify?

if you realise that not everyone is that computer savvy then you wouldnt have finished your sentence, what a stupid stupid thing to say.

I clicked on this thread as an elderly neighbour has just been hit by this and looks like he is going to loose a lot of valuable photos, I'm pretty sure he doesnt deserve it.

They are looking for 500 dollars to decrypt is it worth the risk as his files are irreplaceable - digital photos of family etc.?

A rash of ransomware hit body shops badly about two years ago. These are small, independent businesses who have very little knowledge of IT, but need computers to do their work. (They mostly use turnkey systems designed for body shops.) Most of them paid the ransoms (typically around $300) so that they could go on with their businesses.

The way copy.com allocates storage vs dropbox is more equitable.

dropbox counts the data once for each person you share with.

6 gb in my account.

I share it with you it now counts as 6 gb against your account and 6 gb against mine.

I share it with kach it now counts as 6 gb against his account and 6 gb against your account and 6 gb against mine.

Whether physical or just a matter of accounting the original 6 gb now represents 18 gb to the 3 of us.



With copy.com

6 gb in my account.

I share it with you it now counts as 3 gb against your account and 3 gb against mine.

I share it with kach it now counts as 2 gb against his account and 2 gb against your account and 2 gb against mine.

Whether physical or just a matter of accounting the original 6 gb still represents only 6 gb to the 3 of us.



dropbox counts the full amount of shared data against each account participating in a share

copy divides the full amount of shared data amongst each account participating in a share

Your neighbor is lucky he did not have a hard drive crash. Billions more photos are lost from hard drive failures than anything else. Ransom ware is just another preventable cause of loss of data. I have multiple backups and I still get lazy and have data at risk. It is a constant chore to keep everything backed up.

FYI: the Seagate backup software sucks, I left it running for hours, all night in fact and it did not take.

Called my computer guy, he's going to set me up with something which is user friendly (for idiots like me).

I poked around and the Seagate backup plus "Slim" USB unit stopped loading at six percent, no display for this, you have to stop it (was unresponsive) and click then around.