I drew this cartoon about a decade ago (I think) and I am no longer thinking of it as a "reasonable alternative" to the Death Penalty, but perhaps a precursor to it. Just a little payback first.
Posted on 07/14/2016 9:41:43 PM PDT by Utilizer
...
Ransomware variants are multiplying like rabbits: while some are more sophisticated and tougher to combat, others are more about scamming than kidnapping. Take the new Ranscam malware discovered by Cisco’s Talos team, a low-tech but highly destructive attack that demands ransom from its victims but never returns them their files because it actually deleted them.
Ranscam isn’t the first ransomware variant to destroy files rather than return them after victims pay up—there’s AnonPop and JIGSAW, for example—but it’s a glaring example of how the ransomware scam itself is so lucrative and easy to pull off that less sophisticated attackers are jumping in the game. It’s also a cautionary tale for victims counting on getting their files back when they hand over those Bitcoins.
The lack of crypto in the attack, despite promises of decryption if the victim pays up, also demonstrates that Ranscam is nowhere near as complex or advanced as Cryptowall and other ransomware attacks, the researchers say. It’s more like its name suggests: it’s a ransomware scam to make money quickly.
"Compared to other true ransomware variants such as Cryptowall which spend a significant amount of time and effort developing new functionality and features, Ranscam appears to indicate that smaller, less-funded threat actors are joining the game, attempting to quickly get a piece of the pie," says Earl Carter, security research engineer at Cisco Talos.
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(Excerpt) Read more at darkreading.com ...
Its time to execute people who launch these viruses. Literally.
Wife works from home. All her files were destroyed by cryptowall in April. It was and still is a nightmare for us. A lot of stress and countless hours, even though we had backups from a few months earlier and had 2 antivirus programs running. I agree, these crooks should be shot.
We can rest assured that after the few first executions, the incidence of these mindless, useless criminals would quickly cease altogether.
Malwarebytes.
A shame it’s necessary, but it seems to work.
Which antivirus programs missed Cryptowall?
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.
Link to article about this :
Sophos Labs -Ransomware that’s 100% pure JavaScript, no download required
bkmk
I was thinking extensive genital mutilation, without benefit of anesthesia, but I could accept shooting them.
“Its time to execute people who launch these viruses. Literally.”
I’m with you.
All my web browsing activities are now done via my iPad, or a Pine64 running Linux. I no longer use my Windows based machines for web browsing activities. Streaming audio via Spotify or video via Netflix or Amazon Prime is ok via Windows.
I drew this cartoon about a decade ago (I think) and I am no longer thinking of it as a "reasonable alternative" to the Death Penalty, but perhaps a precursor to it. Just a little payback first.
Find an old abandoned warehouse, preferably one with lots of rats!
Liberals I am sure would point and say "Look! There is a conservative who is using 1984 as a manual!" at which I would have to respond "You project much?"
It is all fun and games for the Left ("Oh, hackers are just minor white-collar criminals, often just kids, we need to go easy on them and give them a second chance!") until one sees the massive amount of money and man-hours wasted, and the loss to individuals, and that wastage creeps into their ability to fund their comically useless entitlement programs and global-warming "remediations".
Not to mention their own bank accounts.
Are these guys ever even caught? Aren't they usually Russians?
Linux. And frequent full backups.
Never been hit by a virus. Also never go online when forced to use the ‘doze OS, so it’s been a winning combo for decades now. :)
Well, dunno about you but when I try that then the bloody XP OS keeps insisting that it needs to receive its overdue Service Pack and keeps trying to "update" by connecting to u-soft.
Once I was called away for a few minutes and when I returned the machine was busily downgrading something at full speed and I was unable to stop it! I unplugged the machine and swore never again to allow XP access to the net, then spend quite a bit of time reinstalling all the partitions on the HDD to get the machine workable again.
Online vids or no, it's just not worth taking the chance of your machine being compromised.
#3 I use Webroot and they say they can block ransomware.
I won’t know unless it happens to me.
#7 Thanks, I followed your instructions and created the notopad js file with your instruction in it and called it: ransomwareprotection.js
Norton and Mcafee. The problem is how it enters the computer. We suspect it came from one of her employers emails since she was pretty careful about opening attachments from people she didn’t know. She also used Skipe, but I don’t know how that would have affected it, but it was running in the background most of the time.
We talked to a local firm about trying to recover her files. It would be $400 to analyse, with no promise of fixing it. The ultimate cost could have run into the thousands. We checked out another firm and the fee was similar. We’re running WebRoot now, on a new computer. We’re also backing her files up at least a couple of times a week on external drives.
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