Ransomware claims to lock Windows licence

[J65nko]

For those who because of family relationships are called upon to diagnose Windows problems ......

From http://www.h-online.com/security/new...e-1226789.html

In what appears to be a lucrative scam, after infecting a system, ransomware blocks users from accessing their system and demands payment of a ransom to restore access. A recent variation on this theme claims to lock the Windows licence. The licence can be restored (re-activated) by calling a supposedly free service number.

[Beastie]

This is a little trickier for users who have caught a dose of GPcode, which, as calls to the The H's associates at heise c't hotline prove, is once more on the rise. This is because this piece of malware encrypts the user's files. The encryption algorithm used is state of the art. GPcode creats a randomly generated 256-bit AES key on each infected system, which it uses to encrypt a number of files including all .doc, .rtf, Excel and PDF files.

Nice!

The moral of the story is always keep safe backups of your entire data. And screw the crooks!

[TerryP]

Not to mention *separate* from the system you're backing up.


I'm happy to have backups in at least 3 places, plus offsite for the important stuff. But all I fear is of course, is hard drive failure, not rm -rf / or would be fileassassins.