Techworld – a small American law firm in North Carolina has lost their entire server full of documents to the CryptoLocker malware. After attempting to pay the ransom, they learned that their efforts to pay were too late.
This particular firm fell victim to a trojan which pretended to be an attachment from their phone system – which sends voicemails as attachments. Not noticing any difference, the malware was opened and began encrypting the files on their network attached server.
After the firm’s IT staff were unable to make any progress at un-encrypting the files, they decided to attempt to pay the ransom – but it was too late. The malware itself had warned that “To decrypt files, you need the private key. The single copy of the private key is on a secret server. The server will destroy the key after the time specified in this window. After that, nobody will be able to restore the files.”
In their case, the attempt to pay the ransom was took late – the files seem encrypted without hope of retrieving them.
ESET warns about Cryptolocker and gives 11 steps to avoid being a victim of the malware.
If you’re infected with Cryptolocker, you can lose all your files – REALLY – YOU CAN!!
Our advice – get a BACKUP – you MUST have you files backed up – and you must have a copy REMOVED from your network – after all, you don’t want to find your backs encrypted – do you?
Use a reputable security product – and run the Cryptolocker Prevention Kit.