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Ransomware is the future

The future of whom? Surely for the ones that use it to infect computers, and maybe for the AV companies that will manage to keep this under control.

Backup is the best option, and also stopping paying money!
 
The high estimate for what CryptoLocker alone brought in was like 150 mil IIRC. Of course copycats are going to want in on that action so I thought back then that this was going to be the new reality. I didn't realize that Adobe Flash and Java were such security holes back then either. If you roll without those or are savvy with Java's whitelisting and are suspicious of every single e-mail attachment (forward unexpected attachments to scan@virustotal.com for an evaluation), chances are almost nil of getting this crap. It's the other users you have to worry about and are dragged into helping the hapless D:
 
I've had a few clients hit with it, I have them all on Altaro backup with reverse deltas and it backs up multiple times per day. Restore to the last point before encryption and everyone is happy. The most I had anyone lose was about 2 hours worth of work on a few documents. Better than being hit with a fat bill $$$$
 
LPCTech said:
Backups > ransomware
Click to expand...
You and I and everyone here knows this but the typical scenario I deal with on the daily is users are happily surfing along with their AVGs or their Nortons when bam their several years worth of photo collection is irreversibly hit by the ransomware and of course they don't have a backup. Hopefully attention shifts to backups rather than relying on shoddy AV but I doubt it.
 
PliotronX said:
You and I and everyone here knows this but the typical scenario I deal with on the daily is users are happily surfing along with their AVGs or their Nortons when bam their several years worth of photo collection is irreversibly hit by the ransomware and of course they don't have a backup. Hopefully attention shifts to backups rather than relying on shoddy AV but I doubt it.
Click to expand...
The people who don't know or take the time to backup have always been screwed anyway. They could be surfing along and get the infamous hard drive actuator click and a dead hard drive just the same to the huge expensive of recovery also.

If people want to play in PC land they have to pay for it in some way, burn to disks/whatever media or up to a service like Carbonite
 
TheSlamma said:
The people who don't know or take the time to backup have always been screwed anyway. They could be surfing along and get the infamous hard drive actuator click and a dead hard drive just the same to the huge expensive of recovery also.

If people want to play in PC land they have to pay for it in some way, burn to disks/whatever media or up to a service like Carbonite
Click to expand...

In the past I used to backup to removeable media, going way back to floppies then cdrs then dvdrs...but as the volume of stuff has increased now I end up relying on external drives...and the trouble is, I've belatedly realised, those drives end up being connected much of the time so any malware might just mess with them as well as the internal ones.

In that regard it isn't the same problem as a dying hard drive, which can be averted even with a back-up internal drive (or two).
 
pmv said:
In the past I used to backup to removeable media, going way back to floppies then cdrs then dvdrs...but as the volume of stuff has increased now I end up relying on external drives...and the trouble is, I've belatedly realised, those drives end up being connected much of the time so any malware might just mess with them as well as the internal ones.

In that regard it isn't the same problem as a dying hard drive, which can be averted even with a back-up internal drive (or two).
Click to expand...

Which is why a couple of these would prevent any malware attacks... (as long as you remember to set it to read only mode.)
http://www.addonics.com/products/shdu3wp.php#tabs-1
Kinda expensive at $115, and it is a hardware solution, so, there would be 0 chance of malware being able to write to the drive in locked mode.
I can see these becoming more common if the ransom ware crap keeps going up.
 
LPCTech said:
Backups > ransomware
Click to expand...

Exactly. I periodically clone my HDDs at home so if anything ever happens I just swap out drives and I'm back in business in just a few minutes.

Happened to me last October and I popped in the backup clone, booted, ran a few updates, and was back up and running...total time of maybe 20 minutes.
 
But still, backing up huge amounts of data (> 5 TB) isn't easy. People tend to get lazy to do it. I don't know but the best option might be backing up your most important files. Put them in one folder and have this folder sync with another folder located in another drive. But again, if this other drive is connected all the time, then it is just exposed to risk the same way the original drive is exposed to it.

Hehehe, I think I'm just too lazy to do manual backups. Somebody need to come up with a way to do automatic backups where the external drive is only mounted when syncing is in process !
 
Elixer said:
Which is why a couple of these would prevent any malware attacks... (as long as you remember to set it to read only mode.)
http://www.addonics.com/products/shdu3wp.php#tabs-1
Kinda expensive at $115, and it is a hardware solution, so, there would be 0 chance of malware being able to write to the drive in locked mode.
I can see these becoming more common if the ransom ware crap keeps going up.
Click to expand...

If I were running a business directly from the computer, like this guy (link nicked from a thread in the off-topic forum)
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-s...mpany-with-one-line-of-bad-code-a6984256.html

then one of those things would actually be a fine idea. But rather pricey for a home machine, even one that has a bit of work-related stuff on it. My cumulative spider solitaire score is important, but maybe not that important.
I think I'll just unplug/replug the usb cables when I remember to!
 
I can't believe that he did that! The no. 1 rule for important data is: Offline backup, if you don't have this...
 
iamgenius said:
Hehehe, I think I'm just too lazy to do manual backups. Somebody need to come up with a way to do automatic backups where the external drive is only mounted when syncing is in process !
Click to expand...

If an "offline" backup can be brought on automatically, then a) it's not offline and b) malware can bring it online.
 
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