With organisations around the world currently suffering from a cyber attack, I like to refer you to this article by Malwarebytes Labs to help keep your computer secure.

"10 easy ways to prevent malware infection"
https://blog.malwarebytes.com/101/2016/ ... infection/

Stay safe and secure.

Very timely TimeLord.
I note there are no easy fixes for this latest ransomware and the UK Health System is considering paying the ransom.

I'm hoping Unix-based computers and servers are immune from this and future attacks. If they are targeted we could lose large chunks of the WWW. I actually think Interpol and the global security organisations will put these &*^%$ out of business very quickly. They will leave a digital fingerprint somewhere....

@Tas mania
There is no guarantee the files will be decrypted, even if the ransom is paid. I hope they can restore from good backups.

The indications are that only Microsoft software was attacked by the ransomware (specifically Windows XP). It appears that it was a modification of a piece of malware designed by the NSA! The heuretic detection of Avast apparently detected it and protected their users.

I am very glad that I use Linux which, with its permissions setup and the way it isolates users from root, is much more secure.
My experience is that it is also considerably more stable.

david.

There's no 100% way to protect your system against all attacks, but there's really only one (and I mean one) effective way to protect your system (and I've mentioned this one before). It's virtualization. I use Virtualbox and run a Virtual Machine within it (typing this one now in my XP VM). Yes; WinXP is an old OS and full of flaws, but I can assure you, I'm more than protected against all attacks except keyloggers (using Ghostpress at the moment to help with that type of attack, but still, you never know). For my host OS (Win10) I only use Windows Defender. Not the best anti-virus/malware program, but again, I don't browse (but a few select sites and rarely) within Win10 itself. I do all of my online stuff within my sandbox (XP VM). Even within WinXP, I run Sandboxie so, in effect, I'm double-sandboxed. Been using this method for nearly 9 years now (but only recently started using Ghostpress). I do have vulnerabilities, of course, but I do my best to mitigate these by recovering my VM to a set golden recovery point often (takes seconds to do so; no joke). I'm more paranoid, maybe, than most, but when I was repairing customer's PCs (worked 5 years at a mom and pop PC repair shop) and seen all the infections that I've seen at that time, I asked myself, there's got to be a better way to protect your OS. Well, this is that better way. I do not depend solely on a firewall or anti-virus program (though I do use both). Those tools just give you a false sense of security (trust me; I know).

The next soft target will be smartphones, how many people have any form of protection on their phones?

Have none myself, TimeLord. Then again, I don't have a smartphone. lol

Wallace

Also ensure regular restore points are being created by the system.

Not really targeting XP. This used to be a bug common to all Windows versions. Recent versions have received security updates. But XP has been out of service for years. I just can't image you can run a public service using computers that are over 10 years old. And if in addition to this they have no backups (10 years is old for a hard disk)...


A malware running with your userid can still encrypt all the files you depend on. The files that are read-only to the malware are the stuff you can reinstall from the installation CD...

Linux isn't immune to ransomware, even if your Linux home PC is a bit safer than a Windows system. AFAIK this happened a forum I used a lot, and may even have happened to GimpForums in the past (but I don't know if the admin fixed it using backups or if he paid the ransom). This is a rather serious problem, the backup strategy of Gimp-Forum.net is a it more complicated than it looks because we need to make sure we have backups of non-encrypted files.

Apparently in March, Microsoft issued an update for Windows 8 and XP - a one-off for the specific vulnerability exploited by this ransomware. It would appear that many people had not installed the update.

It seems that many large organisations are still using Windows XP - it is to be hoped that they have a backup policy for their data.

Whilst Linux is more secure than Windows, I have several backups for the data I consider of value and these backups are done on a rotation basis.

david.

Backups and run your browser in a sandbox. As mentioned VM's are very useful and I use them for security purpose often.

Well I did go ahead and downloaded/installed the XP patch to my VM. Hope I didn't make a mistake. lolol

Keeping 2 setpoints for now just in case.

Sandbox is an excellent way to run programs safely. Lyle introduced this to me years ago and i have used it ever since and have had no problems ever. In fact i believe Lyle used to run sandbox SANDBOXED lol. =)

I run FireJail in Linux. Browsers only have access to the "Downloads" folder and nothing else. You can set FireJail up to work with other apps also, but I only use it for my browsers.

Based on my habits, I consider my vulnerability to these things extremely low to non existent. Now the smartphone would be a very soft target indeed. I don't keep anything important on my phone anyway.

I still do (use Sandboxie within my VM (sandbox). lol

Just call me paranoid, but I'll add that even Andy Grove wasn't paranoid enough in the end. lol

Accessing contacts, photos, location, camara/microphone and making premium rate calls/texts are all possible.

This was the hi-tech solution to the problem.



Hand written notes on every computer.