Crypto-anything Mitigation

So my previous blog was specific to the Cryptowall ransomware. That piece of ransomware in addition to others are hopefully not going to become the new trend on electronic file extortion for money.

While speaking with a client of mine last week I was informed their computer was infected with the Cryptolocker 2.0 ransomware. I  began to research what is other safeguards can we put in place to warn off these attacks?

Below is a short list of some suggestions I hope you read so you are not the next victim.

1) Don’t open e-mails that contain .zip attachments or anything that has a .exe attachment.

2) Always ensure you Antivirus is up to date. Having antivirus that is out of date is like having no antivirus at all.

3) I am recommending a program called (CryptoPrevent) by a company called FoolishIT. This is a free version of their program and can be downloaded (here). This program is to prevent the crypto viruses from running from the %appdata% folder in windows. This is a common place for this and other ransomware to run.

If you are very tech savy you can implement these instructions detailed in group policy or your local computer policy on a stand alone computer. Those instructions can be found (here).

Finally, make sure you have backups! So lets say  you accidentally did fall victim to ransomware what other options do you have besides paying up or forfeiting your documents.