COMPUTER VIRUS WARNING Doing the rounds at the moment is a nasty virus called CryptoLocker. Antivirus Experts say this is the worst virus for about 15 years. If you value your documents, photos, music you need to back them up and read on to see why. I have seen 3 cases of this in the last week, and the outcome was not good in any of the infections. NO known cure for this virus, Antivirus programs cant help infected PCs, although some programs might help detect it, but this is not always the case. How the Virus Works - It encrypts your file one by one. The annoying part is that it installs 2 keys for each file, the public key stored on your PC and a private key installed on any one of thousands of internet servers. The Annoying part is that each private key for each file is different and stored on different servers. So if you do manage to get hold of the private key, its only good for 1 file. What you can do - The only thing you can do to guarantee the safety of your data is to backup your files prior to infection. You should backup your files to media that is not permanently connected to your PC or even the cloud. Devices connected to your PC while it becomes infected and that contain data can also become encrypted. So to sum it up. 1. Create a backup on removable media or the cloud and keep it safe. 2. Carry out step 1 at least once a week. 3. Make sure you backup all documents (Word ,Excel, Powerpoint, Publisher, Outlook, PDFs to name but a few). 4. Backup all your photos and music if you get infected and you have created a backup as above, you have nothing to worry about. Simply restore your data to an uninfected PC. A. Never Pay the demands to unlock your data for a fee. These people infected your PC to start with so providing them with your financial details is not recommended. B. No point taking it to your local computer shop. They cannot do anything, you will be wasting money only to be told that your data could not be recovered. Most importantly of all, After reading this, Dont ask me for help unless you have a backup of your data. I cant help you. If after reading this you decided not too, or are still unfortunate or silly enough not to backup your data, I will offer you one final piece of advice TOLD YOU SO........
Posted on: Thu, 21 Nov 2013 21:35:46 +0000
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