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posted by martyb on Thursday October 29 2015, @10:41AM   Printer-friendly
from the backups-just-do-it dept.

There is a particularly devious type of malicious software that locks users out of their own computer systems until an individual agrees to pay a ransom to the hackers. In these cases, the FBI has surprisingly suggested just ponying up the dough.

It's not the type of advice one would typically expected from the FBI, but that's exactly what was recommended by Joseph Bonavolonta, the assistant special agent in charge of the FBI's CYBER and Counterintelligence Program Boston office.

"The ransomware is that good," said Bonavolonta at the 2015 Cyber Security Summit in Boston, as quoted by Security Ledger. "To be honest, we often advise people just to pay the ransom."

https://www.rt.com/usa/319913-fbi-pay-ransomware-hackers/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Yeah, it's RT, but I did a search, and that or similar headlines popped up on dozens of news sites. I clicked a couple of them, and the stories match. Try this one,
https://thehackernews.com/2015/10/fbi-ransomware-malware.html

Personally, I can almost certainly afford to nuke and reinstall, unless they get my RAID array. Then - I'd have to think hard.


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  • (Score: 2) by martyb on Thursday October 29 2015, @02:28PM

    by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Thursday October 29 2015, @02:28PM (#256034) Journal

    It's unclear to me what operating system you are using. That said, the same general approach should apply.

    Define multiple users on your system. One (or more — in case you somehow lock yourself out of that account) of which have write access, and all the rest have read-only access. For watching videos or viewing pictures, only access the files with a read-only-access user. When inserting new files, use the user account that has the write access. You can accomplish this with ACLs (Access Control Lists). Here's a link for a windows environment [stackoverflow.com] — a similar approach can be used for *nix-like OSs with world/group/user level permissions.

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