Now, hackers have found a way to blackmail gamers

Is this a sign of Global Meltdown?

Pay me in bitcoin if you want to play your video game.

uk.businessinsider.com...

Hackers have hauled in millions over the years, mostly in bitcoins, with a blackmail scheme called ransomware, experts say.

You visit a hacked website or download an evil file, and it encrypts files on your computer and won't give them back until you pay money to designated account.

Those who visit porn sites have been victims of this type of thing for years. Even police stations have been forced to pay up.

a reply to: wasaka

LOL

Anybody whose fallen for this is really really daft. You can literally just remove the offending malware and re-install your games.

At the very worst it requires that you reload your OS, but at the end of the day, if you're smart and do backups, you can be done and back to normal in about 2 t 3 hours.

Files like pictures and videos etc are a whole different story cause you can't necessarily get that stuff back, but you can ALWAYS re-install software.

Also the listed games are AAA titles from at least 2 to 3 years ago...which means hardly anybody is still really playing them at a level worth making malware for.

~Tenth

a reply to: wasaka

They say "some games of Valve", I'd like to know which ones.

I always have porn sites or movie streaming sites have a pop-up website that suddenly downloads a file.

You know what I do? I delete the file

originally posted by: Trueman
a reply to: wasaka

They say "some games of Valve", I'd like to know which ones.

None that are played online. Steam has some of the best online gaming security there is.

a reply to: wasaka

I doubt it's a sign of global meltdown.

It's a sign that people don't know or don't care to use technology properly or that they don't understand how to protect themselves.

This is actually a very good technique and approach. Not that I agree with it since I don't, but it is clever. Using encryption to hold someones files hostage is a smart approach. Encryption technology by it's nature must be reliable and hard to impossible to crack. Using that as it's strength to attack someone rather than secure them is an interesting approach IMO.

However, it's easily avoidable by simply doing what you're supposed to do anyway which is backup your important data on some external media. Flash drives are cheap and easy today and support enough room for most things. I still remember the days of tape backup. Talk about slow and antiquated. There are various reasons for backing up your important data and keeping it safe on some external media besides just avoiding this data hostage scams so there is no excuse to be caught by one of these scams other than you weren't responsible on your end. Sure someone took advantage of that which isn't cool, but you could have easily avoided it. Just like you put your money safely away in your wallet rather than leaving it on the table when going to take a leak. You can be safe without having to rely on other people doing what is right all the time.

Not sure why this is about gamers and not computer users.

Cryptolocker gets on PCs via fly by downloads, and encrypts all of your data (and any network data you happen to have mapped)- then demands bitcoin to get the decryption key.

I've seen entire companies lose every file they've got because one workstation of someone who has way too much network access getting infected.

a reply to: lordcomac

Like they say, "An ounce of preparedness is worth a pound of cure." So true in the information age where computers have sped everything up that at almost light speed you can go from "Top of the World" to "Bottom of the Barrel".

Years ago working an IT job we had a network of hundreds of users at multiple locations and centralized data and services. A new worm had been released that day and was making the news but without a fix as of yet. All it took was one user checking her school email account from one of the computers at the office and in a flash that worm stalled our entire network with traffic as it multiplied and infected more and more computers as fast as it could. It was hours before it was under control again and days to weeks before we could completely remove it and get back to normal at every location.

originally posted by: Trueman
a reply to: wasaka

They say "some games of Valve", I'd like to know which ones.

Stand alone installs of Half Life Orange Box from what I can tell. There are certain versions that don't install via steam.

Considering only local content like saves is carried on your machine when you own and operate a steam account, there's literally 0% chance of this happening to anything in your steam library.

~Tenth

Thanks guys for those answers. I just can't survive without my good old Sins of a Solar Empire and my new Homeworld Remastered.