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Heads up: Ransomware
Friend got nailed by ransomware purporting to be an AdAware update. Insisted on immediate updating and bingo. Friend says it really really looked official.. Nov 21 15 02:21 pm Link Herman Surkis wrote: Whoever writes this shit needs to be sent to Federal Pound Me In The Ass Prison for about 50 years. Nov 21 15 02:53 pm Link Update if anyone is interested. Friend got hit by CrytpoWall 3.0 His turning off his computer as soon as he got the <your fucked> message may have saved a lot files. JPG's gone. Tiff's seem untouched. Movies and Docs seem ok. File names screwed up and he has hours of work to rebuild. He did not understand what the computer store was telling him, but they transferred his files to another computer. They have software chugging along finding files and rebuilding what it can. They will do a fresh Win7 install (without his original disk???) and then transfer all the files back. This will cost around $200 Could be worse, he could have paid the crooks $300 and gotten a bad decrypt key. Happened a lot with CryptoLocker. The cops keep telling you to not pay as that encourages the crooks. Seems the RCMP got hit and paid. A bit of a contradiction, methinks. Just waiting till the hit a Russian mob computer, and screw it up. Those guys have no sense of humor. Dec 25 15 01:02 am Link First off: backup, backup, backup. This is one of the reasons I archive to write once Blu-ray discs (in addition to regular hard disk to hard disk backups) - a virus can't write itself to a burned optical disc after the original write is completed. BTW this has also been priceless when I clicked "Save", when I meant to press "Save As" in Photoshop and other programs. Any competent user also has backups off-site too - fire and theft are just two possible ways to lose all of your work and potentially your livelihood. A backup drive at your home or work, or a family/friend's place, or even in your car may save your neck. Second, if any dialog box/web page appears on your screen that doesn't seem legit, immediately press Ctrl+Alt+Del on a Windows machine, select Task Manager, and kill your web browser and any applications or processes that are suspect. Do not press any button on the dialog - even the "Close" or "No" buttons. If the bad guys are smart enough to write malware, they are smart enough to make anything you click start the destroy process. If you cannot do this , immediately press and hold the Power button on your machine for five seconds. The machine will immediately shut down. If you think your machine may have been infected, do not restart it until you have sought professional advice. A backup image of your Operating System and Applications is easy to do, most hard drive manufactures even have free software to do so. It can get you up and running in minutes - no need to re-install the Operating System then each app, look for serial numbers, do update after update (you may still need to do updates, but it will be a small fraction of what you would need to do from scratch). Dec 25 15 01:50 am Link As a member has said back up, back up, back up. External drives are cheap. Back up and disconnect the drive from your computer. Cloud storage is a decent idea for photos and important documents. I know I sound like a broken record but try Linux as a dual boot and browse with it instead of Windows. Its easy to do and may really save you. A few other things to try. Create and use a non admin account. This will limit what can be installed on your system. This is a tad old but may be helpful: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/virus-r … on#prevent People seem to get hit most often from a attachment via a email. Careful with anything from anyone you don't know. I've received email from folks who had their accounts hacked. I don't want to give the impression that Linux or even OS X is immune to problems but Windows is most attacked. A three TB drive is only $100.00. Buy one. http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/prod … amp;ven2=, Keep your system up to date and update your virus protection. Dec 25 15 02:22 am Link Yep to the last two posts. I have been telling him for years to not depend on the MS free anti-virus. I have also been telling him to back up to an external drive. He actually has a 500g that he does not use. It has almost killed me to not say "I told you so". If I am not expecting an attachment, I do NOT open it. My email will only open as text, I turned off HTML. And I am leery of popups that you have to click something to continue reading. As mentioned above respectable sites have been hacked and you could be the guy that gets nailed before they fix it. The computer guys told him to forget the ctr-alt-del and kill an application. If something strange happens, shut down NOW. They claim that they can get in on boot (safe mode?) before the nasty gets started again and hopefully defeat it. Basically they are saying, by the time you hit c-a-d, and decide what app. you want to terminate, a lot of damage could be done. Alt + F4 is the emerg. shutdown of Netscape. I have various externals which stay turned off till needed. Hard for anything nasty to attack a drive that is not turned on. Stuff migrates upward to final drives. WD 4Tb and Seagate 4TB, mirror each other. I figure that since they are different manu. they should not fail at the same time. Plus the files go from either onto a Seagate 5TB which is either off site or in a fire safe (ok, that's the theory. Which works when I remember to take the 5TB offsite) Every so often I get organized enough that I can get Acronis to do incremental backups. As said above whatever your system, backup, backup. Over the years I have been hit with 2 viruses and one drive crash. Lost a bunch of stuff with the drive crash and what was recovered cost me more than a top external. Now, when things are up to date, I would not need to spend money on computer geeks, just toss the old drives and move on. If a virus hits, wipe and use the mirror. Or at worst a fresh install of everything. Drive crash, $300 for geeks to retrieve some of the contents, or $100 to have all the contents backed-up on another drive...hard decision here.  Dec 25 15 06:37 am Link Herman Surkis wrote: MM recently had a "pop up" put in place in the browsing tab and didn't inform its members; go to the site forum. This worried a number of us, including myself. It could very well of been ransomware. Dec 25 15 02:16 pm Link Herman Surkis wrote: Who is still using Netscape? Dec 25 15 02:33 pm Link Jerry Nemeth wrote: Smart ass. Dec 25 15 02:50 pm Link Herman Surkis wrote: I have used Firefox for years myself. Dec 25 15 03:12 pm Link  Dec 25 15 03:33 pm Link Gerardo Martinez wrote: That's what people do when they find out I'm still using my AOL address! At least I don't use AOL browser anymore. I use Chrome. I use Firefox too every once in awhile. Dec 25 15 04:19 pm Link I have a friend that works in IT and he said it's getting difficult to avoid. Even if you have the most expensive firewall and anti-virus software, it still comes down to the person between the computer and the keyboard. He can't get people to recognize the email addresses, the subject line and the message text. People just love opening attachments and that just causes all of the havoc. Dec 26 15 04:20 am Link What he said. Ain't no such thing as too many backups. I have Time Machine running for hourly backups, I have a cloned boot disk offline I backup to every week or so, I have burned BluRay disks. Firewall is on, Li'l Snitch monitoring web traffic, surf from a non-admin account, active anti-virus, NEVER accept unexpected requests for machine password, careful what software I download, keep my ear to the ground with regard to new threats, etc. etc. etc. And I know that I am not immune to threats, merely a harder-than-average target. But above all else, backup, backup, backup. Yet I marvel at the innocents I come across daily who have NEVER made a backup of any sort. And every once in a while, I see/hear one of them whining about a disaster that has just wiped out everything. Dec 26 15 05:27 am Link J M P wrote: Yep. Dec 26 15 08:30 am Link Pointed out to friend who got hit with the Ransomware, that there are some great boxing day sales on top anti-virus as well as external HD's. His answer was, "I don't want to think about it or deal with it until I get my computer back". He is actually debating if he should upgrade his computer (like that will help?). I know him an he will delay getting the stuff because it will be more expensive next week. My comment was "So you really prefer to pay $300 to a computer tech to get you back 1/2 your information, and have you spend 100hrs cleaning up corrupted file names?" That did not go over well. I guarantee that the next time something happens, I will NOT hear about it, nor will I care. Sometimes you cannot help people and you just have to stand back and watch them get run over by the freight-train. Well maybe not watch, go someplace else. Dec 26 15 03:02 pm Link GRMACK wrote: They won't. Cheap taxpayer money. Dec 26 15 03:04 pm Link People can buy malware kits on-line. These kits used to only be available on the dark web but now can be found on various websites you can get to easily. Thousands of emails are hacked every day. There are open source programs that crack passwords. These goofs can look at email lists of your contacts and send you a email with a attachment with the malware. This is part of why you should use strong passwords and not the same ones for all your accounts. I mentioned buying the kits but they can also be found for free. This is serious stuff. Several small town police departments have been hit and ended up paying to retrieve their data. Years ago a person had to have some decent skills to attack you. Now with things like Kali: https://www.kali.org/ its easier. Its all mostly automated. Its so wide spread that its difficult for law enforcement to deal with. Some of you might be familiar with the pineapple box. I don't say this to frighten anyone but IT security isn't keeping pace with the exploits. Photographers should store their important images on external drives they disconnect from their computers. Careful of those free Wi-Fi hotspots when you travel. This is helpful: https://www.eff.org/Https-everywhere There are USB devices that are basically plug/play and hack. Easy to buy or make. I was at Starbucks a few months ago where I overheard two young guys discussing Wireshark. I stopped them and asked what they were up too. They looked nervous and left. People may think its only the banks and stores who need to take care. Don't fool yourself. Money is money and you're as inviting a target as any. Dec 26 15 08:32 pm Link Tony Lawrence wrote: Thanks loads. Dec 26 15 11:12 pm Link |
