Rise of ransomware attacks prompts expert calls for governments to establish 'cyber militia'

a reply to: tommo39

My father got nailed with one of these, and it was one of the funniest things I have ever witnessed. It was an easy fix, so probably not as advanced as these hackers.

Dad: (Calling at 11pm) We have a problem.
Me: Is everything okay? What's wrong?
Dad: The police are in my laptop. They're watching me. They have pictures.
Me: (I all ready know what's going on and trying not to laugh.) Jesus, Dad. What do they want?
Dad: They want $200 dollars. Do I go to court to pay it? Can I just show them my credit card?
Me: DONT SHOW THEM YOUR CREDIT CARD! What were you doing?
Dad:....nothing.
Me: Seriously, what did you click before it happened?
Dad: (totally deflated) I was trying to watch last nights American Idol. (They have my picture on the screen! How can they see me???)
Me: (laughing so hard now) Dad, where were you trying to watch it?
Dad: ummm.. Www.watchamericanidolforfreeonline.eu

Then I told him what was up and to just shut the computer until I could come over, but man, for someone like my dad with no computer savvy who didn't have someone to call? Scary stuff.

a reply to: tommo39

Yesterday (June 8th) the University of Calgary, with an enrolment of approximately 30,000 students, paid a Cyber-Ransom of $20,000 to regain access to the University's computers.

University of Calgary pays $20,000 ransom to Cyber-Hackers

a reply to: Leonidas

University of Calgary

This is what my OP is all about.......

a reply to: tommo39

Readin' and comprehendin' is hard before my 1st coffee...

I wonder who really benefits, in the long-term, from these "ransomware" attacks? Disillusioned hackers that could find far easier ways to gain money without relying on their victims to cave in, and the risk of having the money they extort traced back to them...or perhaps manufacturers of back up digital storage devices/services like external hard drives, USB keys and cloud?

I would be VERY interested to see the % sales growth of back up devices/services since the ransomware issue became mainstream.

a reply to: tommo39

These kind of attacks are exactly what the governments want to happen on a large scale basis.

Internet security is NOT at all hard, well for the most part for the average individual.

DDoS attacks still have the affect they do because they exploit the internet itself. The government isn't going to protect us from that.

Ransomware is easily resolved with a full system restore, and any dumbass that keeps pertinent information on their hard drive is just not educated at all about the multitude of backup resources. Secure secondary sites at that.

Then again we are talking about humans....

a reply to: Atsbhct

That was vundo- old variant that didn't actually do anything other than nag you.

The new ones encrypt it all- either certain file types, all file types, or the entire system drive. They'll encrypt anything they can get across the network, too. Scary stuff.

Rather than starting a 'cyber militia' I'd call on people to educate themselves before clicking links or downloading software , Ransomware attacks are usually born from user ignorance of such threats and poor security protocols.

a reply to: lordcomac

Yup he dodged a bullet there and got the less complex one or a copy cat like AutoLocky which are fairly common today too except those only change file extensions.

My Father managed to somehow infect his PC with the .Locky ransomware which deletes system restore points and shadow copy files so the only way to "fully" recover is external backup which is too expensive around here.

But luckily since .Locky makes copies of the original files and encrypts the copies and deletes the originals you can fairly easily get them back with file recovery, strangely it only encrypted .doc and .docx files so it was even easier to recover.

I kept telling him not to open shady emails with attachments and not to download stuff from shady sites but his usual "innocent" response is "I didn't download anything "

on one of the forums where I take the information, there was a proposal to announce a "war" extortionists
for example by means of it myspybot.com...

Cyber Warfare is a fraud that was invented by western mass media. It is not existent in reality and there's no real cyber or electronic connection of military infrastructure or strategic infrastructure to networks.
The Stuxnet presumed success against Iranian centrifuges in 2010 is a deception that was supposed to drive the world into another "Cyberscare", but actually ended up turning into a deception carefully orchestrated by Iran and the west fell into it completely. The other target of such deception attempted by the west are western IT-geeks themselves who fell for the trick of feeling cool while breaking hashed passwords and other fancy stuff.

No military or strategic facility uses networked electronics to which external electronic inputs can be sent. Even though some may allow output information to be sent outward for monitoring, supervision or public awareness.
If the fantastic NATO Cyber units simply want to collect twitter passwords and break into Facebook accounts, then ... well, they are not being serious about warfare.