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MCC Daily Tribune Archive

Ransomware - What You Need to Know


Ransomware is malicious software that infects your computer and gives cybercriminals the ability to lock your PC from a remote location and encrypt your files grabbing control of all information and data stored. To unlock the virus, it launches a pop-up window that asks us for ransom in the form of a payment.

You may encounter this malware that "LOCKs" your personal and work files and renders them useless, then demands that you pay a fee to the criminals who've encrypted them.  If you ever see files on a shared network drive or PC that don’t open and contain unusual extra letters and numbers after it, such as a file “schedule.doc” being renamed to “schedule.doc.ccc” or “schedule.doc.ecc” please contact the Communications and Network Services, Technology Support Desk at (x8324), option 3, to report the issue. These files could have been victims of ransomware.  CNS has means to restore the locked files to their original state from nightly backups.

How to protect yourself?

Do not to open emails from senders you don’t know - specifically those emails with ATTACHED files, including archives such as ZIP files. These can contain the ransomware payload if double clicked and run.

Full article on Ransomware by Panda Security at:<https://www.pandasecurity.com/mediacenter/malware/cryptolocker/>

Jeff Dunker
Communications and Network Services
10/05/2015