I want to share some very useful advise we received from Paul Brierton or Primary IT Services ( www.primaryitservices.ie) about “Ransomware”.
Paul Said:
As a point of interest to you and your customers, I have had a few cases recently of “Ransomware” infections, where the user’s documents were encrypted and would only be decrypted on payment of a ransom (in one case $360).
The infection was contained in an email attachment that masqueraded as a photograph, it was named “photo.jpg.zip”, most people didn’t even notice that it was a Zip file and just opened it, unleashing the trojan virus.
The only remedy other than paying the ransom (not recommended, giving credit card details to these people!) is a total loss of data and re-installation of Windows.
But there is a preventative measure, firstly don’t open emails or especially attachments from people you don’t know or trust, secondly there is an “Anti-ransom-ware” program now available which I am advising my customers to use:
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/malwarebytes-anti-ransomware/
I hope you can pass this on to your customers to safe-guard them and to stop these evil people!
Regards,
Paul Brierton.
