In this blog post, I’m going to talk about probably the evilest type of virus around today, it is called ransomware, you might have already heard of this.
Basically what it does is once you get infected with it, it encrypts all your files and makes you pay to unencrypt it.
Any files it gets its hand on it just start encrypting right away doesn’t tell you it’s on the background and then once it’s done it gives a pop up that says hey we have your files and if you don’t pay us you are not getting them back ever.
These ransoms are typically hundreds of dollars but can be in a thousand and almost always require you to pay in bitcoins because it is very hard to trace.
It will tell you that if you do pay you will get the decryption key to restore the files. The key is stored on the hacker’s computer and if you don’t pay up within 4 to 8 hours or so they will destroy the encryption key and your files will be completely unrecoverable.
Strangely enough sometimes they will even give you a discount if you pay early and if you think you are just going to decrypt the files yourself, you are not going to able to do it, the keys are often two thousand and forty-eight bit (2048 bit) which means to decrypt it with an average desktop will take quadrillions of years, it's just not going to happen.
These types of viruses are becoming more popular and even worst because it makes people actually pay up so there is more incentive for the hackers to keep doing it and doing it more.
A Kaspersky study recently showed said that in 2015 there were over a 175000 detected infected computers and there could be even more that were undetected and so that is a lot of people and a lot of money.
The worse part about this virus is that you can’t just delete them off the computer, sure you can? But you will lose your files forever, you can’t get the files back even if you remove the virus and professionals will tell you look don’t pay the ransom but for someone who might have just one copy of their family photos or important documents, they might think it is worth it, so what can you do to protect yourself against these types of ransomware?
There are actually a few things you can do first let’s talk about how to prevent it In the first place.
In terms of basic security practices, you need to be careful when opening email attachments even a pdf or word document can infect your computer or regular document if it has some vulnerabilities and a lot of times also spammers will send you an email that has your email spoof as the from address so it would look like it's coming from yourself as if you sent yourself a document and then to try to get you to open that up.
So how do you prepare in case you do get infected anyway. There is only really one thing you can do and that is to backup all your files in a way that will allow you to recover them afterward.
If you just backup to an attached drive that is mapped to your computer for easy access that might not be safe because like I said these viruses are smart, they will go to all mapped drives whether it’s a hard drive or a thumb drive and infect all those files as well.
So if you are going to use a local backup I will recommend you are not mapping it to a drive or scheduling the backup and only plug it in during the backup and unplugging it afterward that way it's completely separate from your computer.
I will personally recommend BACKBLAZE that’s just what I use and it allows for unlimited backup for about 5dollars a month. I think I had some way around three terabytes and it’s been working fine.
So backing up whatever way you do it is probably the best way to protect against ransomware and a lot of other viruses as well and if you think about it ransomware in a way isn’t any worse than a hard drive failure because you going to lose your files, either way, it’s just that hard drive failure is guaranteed to happen over the course of the hard drive’s life so you really want to back up in any case.
So now that you know about ransomware, hopefully, you’re not too paranoid so if you do take the precautions I mention then even if it does happen you will be fine.
I hope you guys found this blog post helpful if you did be sure to share with friends so I know you liked it
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