Ransomware Making a Comeback

snydeq writes "Ransomware is back. After a hiatus of more than two years, a variant of the GpCode program has again been released, kidnapping victims' data and demanding $120 for its return, InfoWorld reports. 'Like the ransomware programs before it, GpCode encrypts a victim's files and then demands payment for the decryption key. The new version of GpCode — labeled GpCode.AX by security firm Kaspersky — comes with a bit more nastiness than previous attempts. The program overwrites files with the encrypted data, causing total loss of the original data, and uses stronger crypto algorithms — RSA-1024 and AES-256 — to scramble the information.'"

Comments

Backups

[coerciblegerm]

Simple solution: Back up your data. In other news, make sure you patch software and operating system vulnerabilities and don't run executables from unknown sources.

Re:Backups

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to break it to ya buddy, but accidental deletion and hardware failure make up 100% of my data loss causes. Shocking, I know. You see, some people actually do patch their software and ensure their OS is up to date, and some people don't run executables from strange places.

Mounted, active storage is perfectly acceptable for backing up all but the absolute most critical of data.

Re:Backups

[wvmarle]

My data set is about 40 GB (gzipped).

Amazon et. al. while cheap and off-site and probably pretty secure would require encryption at least. I don't want unencrypted data there. Makes it a bit more cumbersome.

The killer is going to be the upload. I've 2 Mbit up, uploading my data set to Amazon would saturate my pipe for about 55 hours straight. And that's a show stopper.

I'm slowly looking for 64GB USB drives. They exist but the local shop has only 32 GB, so have to look further. That's a much easier solution than Amazon.

Re:Backups

[ArsenneLupin]

Whenever I see family/friends/co-workers using external drives for "backup" I have to repress the urge to launch into a lecture on the absurdity of relying on a local, always mounted backup.

You know, malware is not the only threat to data. There's also hard disk failures, and human error. "Always-mounted" external disks protect against both.

WesternDigital and all the other purveyors of external hard disks should be ashamed of themselves for promoting their products as a reasonable backup solution.

... and even if you are concerned about "always mounted" being vulnerable to malware, you can always keep your drive securely stashed away, and only connect it once a week to do your backup.

The ONLY kind of calamity that such devices protect you from is accidental deletion or hardware failure.

Which is already quite useful. Even though we like to scoff at windows users, most malware is not interested in trashing user's data, and anti-virus programs still manage to catch most malware (if one is installed).

...or catastrophic disaster (flood, fire, theft).

... which are quite rare compared to the more usual failure modes (hard disk failures, or accidentally deleted the wrong files).

Considering how cheap Amazon S3 [amazon.com] is, off-site backups are finally a real solution for the average person.

You've got to trust Amazon to respect the privacy of your data.