CryptoLocker Gang Earns $30 Million In Just 100 Days

DavidGilbert99 writes "A report from Dell Secureworks earlier this week reported that up to 250,000 systems have been infected with the pernicious ransomware known as CryptoLocker. Digging a little deeper, David Gilbert at IBTimes UK found that the average ransom being paid was $300, and than on a very conservative basis just 0.4% of people paid the ransom. What does this all add up to? $30 million for the gang controlling CryptoLocker — and this could be 'many times bigger.'"

Comments

hey dummies

[Anonymous Coward]

The link is wrong

Re:hey dummies

[bondsbw]

And so is the $30 million figure. 0.4% * 250,000 * $300 = $300,000.

Re:hey dummies

[girlintraining]

Wal-Mart has the highest revenue in the US - 469.2 billion according to the Fortune 500.

You seem to be laboring under the delusion that companies only exist, and earn profit, for one year. Then they return to their ancestral home in the profit river, where they lay their nest eggs and golden parachutes for the next generation, and then die.

Alas, companies make revenue year over year... and some of the biggest frauds this country has seen have taken decades before the government acted to stop it. So "Trillions of dollars of revenue" is not an inaccurate statement. At least not if you have more brains than an anonymous coward...

So, Zuckerberg is behind cryptolocker????

[wbr1]

Here is the correct link: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/cryptolocker-criminals-earn-30-million-100-days-1429607

Correct Link

[DavidGilbert99]

Here is the correct link to the CryptoLocker story http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/cryptolocker-criminals-earn-30-million-100-days-1429607

Re:Said every IT person. Ever.

[wbr1]

Unfortunately, an external drive backup using your scheme is of little to no use against this threat. It will encrypt all attached drives, network, USB or otherwise, so long as the user has permissions. It will start with commonly needed file extensions first.

Unless your backup is not visible to the virus, you are toast. This is a situation where unattached, or off-site backups and cloud solutions win. A simple user with an always attached USB drive will still be toast.

Re:Better Than Commercial Software?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Yes they do. Just delcare everything to be non-sensitive. Much easier than doing any kind of research.

Try this to fix the infection...

[weeboo0104]

I believe I got hit by this about a week ago when I clicked on an advert linked on Chicago Tribune's website.

A fullscreen message appeared saying my computer had been encrypted and I had to pay $300 to decrypt it. I pulled my network cable out and had to power off my PC because the keyboard would not work. I was able to boot back up, but when I logged in both regularly and in Safe-Mode, a full white screen saying "please connect to the Internet" appeared and I couldn't use the keyboard again.

I pressed F8 on boot and booted into Safe-Mode Command line only. Once I logged in and saw the command line, I typed rstrui.exe (windows System Recovery) and using the Restore Wizard, restored to a checkpoint from a day earlier. I restarted my PC again and let it boot normally and once I was able to log in without seeing the message, reconnected my network cable.

My PC was never encrypted. The message only said it was. The clincher was before I booted Windows in Safe-Mode, I used a Knoppix DVD to mount the Windows partition and copy off my personal data before I started the recovery process. The data was perfectly readable and not encrypted.