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.