I received this email from a friend whose husbands companys IT specialist sent out the following to all of their employees, today: VERY IMPORTANT! There is a new virus that is making headlines right now. It is called Cryptolocker. What it does is encrypts most of the files on your computer, including files on network drives, so you can only open them with the encryption key created by the virus makers It will give you a notification screen telling you this and information on how to pay $300 ransom to obtain the key and unlock all of your files. It gives you 72 hours to send the funds or they say they will destroy the key. This is a real virus and at this time there is no defense for it from antivirus software. There is no software that can reverse the encryption and probably never will be. You can become infected by a few methods. 1. You receive an email with a file attachment. It could be a pdf, jpeg, word document, excel spread sheet, video file, mp3 file, zip file etc. 2. You receive an email with a link to an infected website that will install the virus on your PC if you click on it. 3. You visit an infected web site that installs the virus on your PC. It is very important that you not open ANY attachments or Links in emails unless you know for certain that it is from someone that you know. If in doubt do not open them. If you receive an email that looks like it might have come from someone you know, but seems strange such as the ones that several people received a few days ago, DO NOT open the attachment or open the link. You should also contact the person who supposedly sent it. Not by replying to the email but by creating a new email from scratch and using their known email address. You can also call them on their known phone number, not one on the email. At this time there is no antivirus software that will catch this and no software that can undo the encryption. The only way to undo the encryption is to pay the ransom to receive the key which is not something that we would do because it would be providing funds to the criminals behind this so they could continue to spread this virus. Because this virus can be spread by visiting an infected web site, you need to limit your internet activity to ONLY Business related surfing. Use caution when going to new business related sites. I would also advise you to take these same precautions on your own PCs at home.
Posted on: Fri, 25 Oct 2013 02:26:12 +0000
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