Can a program be written to stop encryption as it's detected and alert the user? 'You are about to encrypt your work. Do you want to continue?'
The problem is, so many legitimate programs use encryption that if they set one of those User Account Control pop-ups to be triggered by it, every user would just disable it or ignore it because it would be happening all the time.
Some have a delivery method - Javascript attachments. Since most people have the default turned on in Explorer - not to show file extensions - they will name a file something like Invoice.txt.js. Since the .js extension doesn’t show up, the file looks like Invoice.txt.
Most people will assume that is safe to open ( Microsoft doesn’t help matters, because the default icon for a javascript extension resembles a document icon ). People will click on this and it will execute the script, connecting to a download server, fetching the actual ransomware in the form of a Windows program (an .EXE file), and launching it to complete the infection.
The way to counter this is to create a text file with notepad and rename it with the .js extension. Then right click on it and tell it to open this with Notepad from then on.
This way if one accidentally downloads one of these and clicks on it, it won’t execute.
Create a text file by right click and new Text document and save as All files with a name like: ransomwareprotect.js
Then right click on it and highlight open with and choose Notepad
Notepad is located in c:\windows folder.
Choose another app (win10) Win7 is similar.
Then check the box:
Always use this app to open .js files and click ok.
Store the file anywhere like the Desktop or Documents.