Okay so, I am seeing this infection way too fucking often at work. It's becoming extremely commonplace, so listen up. Cryptolocker and cryptowall are seriously really goddamn bad. Every image, text file, spreadsheet, whatever on your system is fair game for this infection.
Are you working on some important project right now? maybe an RPG Maker game? maybe some class project? maybe something for work?
If you were to get hit with this right now, could you feel okay losing every single doc, jpg, png, etc. on your entire system?
Because that's what this infection does, completely behind the scenes until it's too fucking late. it takes all of your personal documents and encrypts them with a currently unbreakable form of encryption, you won't notice they are being encrypted until they are useless husks of your former files.
The most recent variant of this infection is basically fucking FLAWLESS, it encrypts your shit, deletes any shadow copy backups (system restore) and then kindly lets you know (As soon as it's all finished) it "protected" all of your data and you can pay them in bitcoin to get it back. (which funnily enough doesn't work as well as their encryption)
the ONLY way to protect your data from this is to have a backup. DROPBOX DOES NOT WORK IT ENCRYPTS EVERYTHING IN YOUR DROPBOX FOLDER. (As Halo reminded me, you can roll back files on dropbox but A. That's only anything in dropbox and B. Only if they still have old enough versions of the file. that's not a real backup anyway. but carbonite doesn't do shit either unless you contact them and hope they have a version backup of your stuff from prior to infection.)
Have a networked drive? that's fair game too. gone. (not always 100% depending on settings but whatever)
have an attached external? it can encrypt that too if you have it attached when the system is infected. (not always but why take the risk)
So what to do then? Make sure you have your files in more than one place and keep that second copy disconnected (unless performing a backup).
If you want automatic backups? I personally know Retrospect disk to disk backups work. That said retrospect isn't free, it also is professional level software that costs quite a bit. Finally, there's no way to know if all of a sudden they decide to change the code of this infection to encrypt major backup software filetypes. so there's definite risk there.
seriously this shit is really bad and I don't want you guys to lose shit to this horrible garbage. so each and every one of you creative bastards make sure you have a backup of your creations. It's not work worth losing to these ransom groups.
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