Out with the old and in with the new.
On June 22, 2014 the United States Department of Justice (DoJ) announced the takedown of the Gameover ZeuS botnet system and with it the malicious ransomware known as Cryptolocker that encrypted and held PC’s hostage in exchange for hundreds of dollars. This was a huge blow to Cryptolocker, but it wasn’t down for the count. Not yet. The code was still being traded through black market websites and businesses and home computers were still being affected by CryptoLocker. At this time people had three choices to make: reformat, pay the ransom, or if they had RollBack Rx installed revert back to an older snapshot before infection. That was it.
Then on August 6, 2014 the final blow was dealt to CryptoLocker. Through a joint partnership between IT security companies FireEye and Fox-IT, they created www.decryptcryptolocker.com. The software developers and tech security experts managed to reverse engineer and discover a digital warehouse full of decryption keys connected to CryptoLocker. All it takes now to remove the ransomware is to send in an infected file through their website and they’ll send you back the decryption key. If the US DoJ made the first blow, this was the final punch.
So long, CryptoLocker.
But, unfortunately, it was too late. By then the code had already started to get in the hands of other hackers and it started to evolve into something worse. As of September, 2014, the number of ransomwares has sky rocketed and people are now being hit with all sorts of vicious hostage-taking code.
According to two recent studies, within a week of CryptoLocker being taken down the number of PC’s infected with ransomwares actually went up. The most prevalent of which being the new and improved Cryptowall.
Six months since the takedown of CryptoLocker, Cryptowall infected 625,000 systems and made $1.1-million.
Hello again, ransomwares.
In a threat report generated by security firm F-Secure, the increasing acceptance of Bitcoin and other online currencies (which are for the most part anonymous) has actually helped ransomware creators get paid without being traced. This has only bolstered hacker confidence. F-Secure concluded in an interview with Ars Techina that crypto-currencies like Bitcoin are a double-edged sword, and the takedown of the Gameover ZeuS botnet may actually cause a digital arms race between criminals and the police. That means bigger and badder ransomwares being worked on every day, and innocent PC users have only a few choices available to them again. Reformat the hard drive, pay the ransom, or use RollBack Rx and its continuous data protection features.
RollBack Rx is still one of the best defenses against CryptoLocker, Cryptowall, and any other ransomware currently out there. While other anti-virus and recovery software work inside of the Windows operating system, RollBack Rx’s subconsole which exists outside of the Windows OS acts as a failsafe where users can simply load an older snapshot before the infection was ever there. It’s that easy. No more fear of having your data lost, corrupted, or the painful choice of paying off a hacker. Just use the PC time machine and go back to when everything was OK. That’s it.
Remember, you can have the best anti-virus and anti-malware in the world, but nothing will prevent a user from downloading an email attachment or clicking on a simple pop-up containing this code. To be secure, you need layers. RollBack Rx and its instant recovery software provides that deep rooted security that will get you out of any software disaster in seconds, including ransomwares. Don’t get taken advantage of by these cyber-criminals. Protect yourself and your computer.