It’s not often that malware comes along and surprises the IT industry at large. Unfortunately, a particularly nasty virus has reared it’s ugly head over the last month and it shows no signs of slowing down. You may be familiar with ransomware; a virus that cripples your system until you fork over money to regain access. A recent variant made headlines locally as it masqueraded as coming from the RCMP. Well, this latest variant, CryptLocker, definitely takes things up a notch.
Upon infection, CryptLocker starts working quickly in the background. It begins encrypting files and once completed, it displays a warning that your files are encrypted and inaccessible; only a payment of $300USD will restore access. And while you might think this a bluff, it’s not. Your files are in fact inaccessible and encrypted. And the only way, as of this writing, to restore access is to pay the $300USD. Removing the virus is actually quite easy, but that doesn’t restore access to your files.
To add to this, there is a time limit restricting how long you have to deal with this. The virus only gives you 72 hours to pay. After that, the virus removes itself, deletes the portion of the virus required to recover your files, and disappears. Your files? You will likely never regain access to them.
So, what can you do? Obviously, having installed and up-to-date along with Windows Updates being installed, will help. But it may not be enough. Many antivirus vendors are still struggling to detect this. And once you are infected, it’s likely too late. The only way to avoid having this make your life extremely difficult is by having a good backup in place. But what’s important is to have a backup that keeps multiple versions of a file.
If your backup solution only keeps one copy of each file and overwrites that backed up file whenever it changes, it’s likely that your backup solution will eventually backup the encrypted file. At which point, restoring your files will only restore an earlier copy of the backed up file.
There is no easy way to say this. As it stands right now, it is extremely difficult to prevent this from happening. The best option is to plan for the worst. And that starts with backing up your data. We recommend ; it’s inexpensive and it works. It backs up to the cloud and to a local external drive (if you have one). And you get a 30 day trial period to test it out.
Whether you choose or something else, please back up your data immediately. If you wait, it may be too late. We try not to sensationalize risks; the industry is rife with that already. But this threat is real.
Don’t just take our word for it. Here are some other sources for you to review.