Were developed by governments and other bodies. Ryan Rubin, MD of global risk consultancy Protiviti, agrees: “CryptoLocker has been designed to make money using well-known, publicly available cryptography algorithms that “I don’t think anyone in the world could break the encryption,” says Gavin O’Gorman, spokesman for internet security firm Symantec.
Similarly, all the files in shared network drives that were connected at the time of the attack could also become encrypted and inaccessible.ĬryptoLocker currently only affects PCs and can easily be removed with anti-virus software, but its effects cannot. Even if you had backed up your files, he says, if your back-up device was connected to your computer when CryptoLocker struck, you may not be able to recover them. “If you haven’t got a backup and you get hit by CryptoLocker, you may as well have dropped your PC over the side of a bridge,” says Paul Ducklin, security adviser for anti-virus software company Sophos.
CryptoLocker then launches a window displaying a demand for ransom (to be paid in less-traceable forms such as Bitcoins and Green Dot Moneypaks) and a countdown timer showing the date and time before which the user must submit payment in order to obtain the decryption key before it is destroyed: When a user opens such a message, CryptoLocker installs itself on the user’s system, scans the hard drive, and encrypts certain file types, such as images, documents and spreadsheets. The CryptoLocker worm is generally spread via drive-by downloads or as an attachment to phony e-mails disguised as legitimate messages from various business, such as fake FedEx and UPS tracking notifications.
CryptoLocker is a particular form of ransomware known as cryptoviral extortion, a scheme in which key files on the system’s hard drive are encrypted and thus rendered inaccessible to the user unless and until that user pays a ransom to obtain a key for decrypting the files.
Origins: The so-called “CryptoLocker virus” is an example of ransomware, a class of malware that, once it has infected a particular computer system, restricts access to that system until the user pays a ransom.
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