Don’t Pay the Ransom: Ransomware Awareness Part 1 — Identification
medium.com
A guide on how to prevent and fight ransomware for non-technical people
  • @[email protected]English
    10•6 months ago

    Digging customers out from this is quite literally what I do for a living. Issues aren’t always as simple as “don’t pay.”

    The article seemed to be aimed at average desk workers. It didn’t contain any data or suggestions not commonly told in phishing tutorials offered by companies.

    This is an entry level explanation of a highly complex problem. I would suggest you send it to your grandma or a blue collar friend who doesn’t work on computers.

    • tunEnglish
      3•6 months ago

      I want to know -

      1. Do the kidnappers (I do not know the term) keep the promise?
      2. What happened after the paying the ransom money?
      3. What else are involved in addition to paying or not paying?
      • @[email protected]English
        6•6 months ago

        If they don’t uphold their promises, they can’t repeat the scam. I’ve dealt with the hackers and they’re better tech support than larger corps in many ways. They want you to be successful, in a weird way.

        They’re dicks for doing it, but when your admin password is “1991mustang” for 16 years, maybe you deserve a lesson in security.

        @[email protected] is exactly right in their comments.

          • tunEnglish
            2•6 months ago

            Mine is Password (with capital p)

            • NobsiEnglish
              0•6 months ago

              ••••••••? Like this?

      • NobsiEnglish
        4•6 months ago

        Also do this in my business. 1. Most do. Otherwise there would be nobody that pays. 100% of my insured customers got their data back. I cannot speak on Personal ransomware. I never paid myself. 2. We got the key to reverse the encryption and gave that to the lawyers and then started work on decrypting. 3. Are you insured? Does your insurer pay? Do your lawyers know? How did they get in? Is that fixable? Why wasnt it closed before? Is it fixed now? Is there proof that what happened will not immediately happen again? And lots more lawyer stuff.

        • tunEnglish
          6•6 months ago

          This is my first time hearing involvement of insurance and lawyers.

          Thank you for sharing.

      • TechCodexOPEnglish
        3•6 months ago

        They will demand payment in cryptocurrency, usually bitcoin, which is untraceable. There’s no guarantee that they will really keep their word; since it’s completely anonymous, there’s nothing you can do. If you get infected, you just have to accept that your files are gone. The best thing you can do is backup while you still can.

        • @[email protected]English
          4•6 months ago

          Make sure some of your backups are kept offline (so that they won’t be encrypted along with everything else) and also test that they work regularly! Otherwise they might not do what you think they do.