How to use backups to protect your data.īackupAssist supports and advocates the use of a backup rotation that includes archive backups. This means you need to ensure that you have a backup strategy that incorporates a rotation of backups to devices that are retained offline.

The encryption cannot be removed or undone without paying, making a restore of the encrypted data from a backup the only guaranteed and safe method of data retrieval.

Any backup on attached or mounted storage, such as a removable drive or a USB device, can be infected and have its files encrypted.There are two critical points about CryptoLocker and your backups Some users report files being decrypted by paying, others report files were not decrypted after they paid.After the deadline, decryption is offered at a much higher price from an online service run by the CryptoLocker creators. A payment of $300 is demanded with a deadline.Data is selected for encryption based on files extensions, incluiding.Removing the virus will not decrypt the file, and the files cannot be decrypted by force.You can also be infected by another infected computer or a malicious website.The attachment looks like a PDF but contains a ZIP file with an. FedEx or UPS tracking notice) with an attachment. The primary source of infection is a legitimate looking email (e.g.CryptoLocker is a trojan (ransomware) that appeared late in 2013 on Windows computers.The infection will even try to delete Windows Shadow Copy backups before encrypting the files, so the shadow copy cannot be used to retrieve your data.

What makes CryptoLocker of particular concern is that it can also encrypt data on local drives, shared network drives, network file shares, USB drives and (attached) removable hard drives. The files cannot be decrypted, other than by paying, so the only safe way to get your data back is by restoring it from a backup. This ransomware will encrypt certain files and then demand a payment to decrypt them. This year saw the arrival of a particularly nasty virus called CryptoLocker.

Malwarebytes crypto locker