Cryptolocker Ransomware Encrypts User Data For Extortion - Polidicks

My dad's had to fix about 5 people with this problem in the past few months. While I can see it can be hard to avoid, the problem could be solved much easier if people just backed up regularly. It doesnt hurt to make a backup every month, or even every week if you make new, important files extremely often. [editline]9th December 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=O Cheerios O;43125502] Luckily the previous month they had just finished installing a backup system that goes online at a set interval, backs up the data on the server and then promptly goes offline again.[/QUOTE] Doing it right.

[QUOTE=Mike Tyson;42931275]that is true, but that's UAC at work. Now you people see why disabling UAC is really silly[/QUOTE] UAC is a pain in the ass. It can negatively impact many games and it fails to protect the users that need to rely on it most because they have no idea what it's actually telling them. They just click "Ok, run it anyway", oblivious as to why UAC popped up saying a 'video' was a malicious program trying to make bad changes to their computer. It's kinda sad, honestly. The people who UAC protects the most are the people who ignore the dialogs, and the people who won't ignore the dialogs are smart enough to not trigger them in the first place. It's just a pointless little app.

[QUOTE=TestECull;43127722]UAC is a pain in the ass. It can negatively impact many games and it fails to protect the users that need to rely on it most because they have no idea what it's actually telling them. They just click "Ok, run it anyway", oblivious as to why UAC popped up saying a 'video' was a malicious program trying to make bad changes to their computer. It's kinda sad, honestly. The people who UAC protects the most are the people who ignore the dialogs, and the people who won't ignore the dialogs are smart enough to not trigger them in the first place. It's just a pointless little app.[/QUOTE] There's absolutely no way you can know what kind of code an average large program contains. If you're doing anything at all on your computer you're running hundreds of programs - even if you're in the habit of checking the integrity of every program, you can't possibly verify that every contributor to that code is trusted and the program isn't malicious. It doesn't even need to be malicious; it could just contain a weakness or a bug. What if the program overflows a buffer while it's opening a file, resulting in it overwriting something it shouldn't (and wouldn't) even have access to? Running everything as root is the dumbest thing you can do on any programmable device.

Seems like a legitimate use for bitcoins.... to pay off a ransom....

[QUOTE=ThePuska;43128323]There's absolutely no way you can know what kind of code an average large program contains. If you're doing anything at all on your computer you're running hundreds of programs - even if you're in the habit of checking the integrity of every program, you can't possibly verify that every contributor to that code is trusted and the program isn't malicious.[/quote] Yes, you can. It's called "Don't download random shit off untrustworthy websites." I've been following that mantra for ten years or so, and funnily enough, the last time my AV program detected the slightest hint of malware was also ten years ago. It isn't rocket science. [quote] It doesn't even need to be malicious; it could just contain a weakness or a bug. What if the program overflows a buffer while it's opening a file, resulting in it overwriting something it shouldn't (and wouldn't) even have access to?[/quote] What if F:NV crashes again and somehow sends launch codes for nuclear missiles out? What if Garry's Mod crashes and calls the police? What if Firefox crashes after I post this and sends death threats to celebrities? I can make plenty of absurd slippery slope bullshit arguments, too. Doesn't mean they're any truer than yours. The most 'iffy' program I run on a daily basis is Kerbal Space Program, and since Squad isn't in the market of "Ruining their customer's machines due to missing massive bugs that cause the game to crash and overwrite chunks of harddrive while it does so", it's not a concern. Maybe you're running suspicious apps, but me? Nah. [quote]Running everything as root is the dumbest thing you can do on any programmable device.[/QUOTE] Yeah, tell that to Fallout 3, which for me crashes incessantly(Even by FO3 standards) if UAC is on. I'm sorry if you don't like it, but if I have to choose between getting a game made and published by a trustworthy AAA dev to run and having a bit of factory-installed bloatware running I'm going to choose the game. That's all there is to it. My regular AV scans show nothing's getting in so I don't need it on anyway.

[QUOTE=TestECull;43130022]Yes, you can. It's called "Don't download random shit off untrustworthy websites." I've been following that mantra for ten years or so, and funnily enough, the last time my AV program detected the slightest hint of malware was also ten years ago. It isn't rocket science. What if F:NV crashes again and somehow sends launch codes for nuclear missiles out? What if Garry's Mod crashes and calls the police? What if Firefox crashes after I post this and sends death threats to celebrities? I can make plenty of absurd slippery slope bullshit arguments, too. Doesn't mean they're any truer than yours. The most 'iffy' program I run on a daily basis is Kerbal Space Program, and since Squad isn't in the market of "Ruining their customer's machines due to missing massive bugs that cause the game to crash and overwrite chunks of harddrive while it does so", it's not a concern. Maybe you're running suspicious apps, but me? Nah. Yeah, tell that to Fallout 3, which for me crashes incessantly(Even by FO3 standards) if UAC is on. I'm sorry if you don't like it, but if I have to choose between getting a game made and published by a trustworthy AAA dev to run and having a bit of factory-installed bloatware running I'm going to choose the game. That's all there is to it. My regular AV scans show nothing's getting in so I don't need it on anyway.[/QUOTE] You are aware that you're talking about a Bethesda game right? A game dev notorious for putting out games with ridiculous bugs? You know what else causes Fallout 3 to crash relentlessly? Having more than two cores on your processor. Remember that. Generally if an app needs admin privileges to work, its either: meant to because it needs to perform admin only operations, a pre-Vista application, or is buggy/poorly designed. Its been recommended since forever that you only run certain programs as administrator/root. UAC isn't perfect, it isn't quite sudo, but its partially why Windows has gotten more secure in the past few years. Its not quite as easy to compromise the entirety of Windows with only a web browser exploit as it was in XP.

FBI probably wont hunt them down for being criminals.. they'll probably hire them. FBI is looking for computer hackers/security people