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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."
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.
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Friday October 30 2015, @01:25PM
I completely agree. The problem is two fold. One, most companies don't TEST their backups until they actually need them. This bit two of my customers with Ransomware. They thought they backing everything up but it turned out they were missing certain shares due to misconfigurations. The other problem is that users have a bad habit of putting documents places where they are not supposed to be. Having a doc management solution is worthless if everyone store revisions on their local PCs and never checks them back in. Backing up PCs is usually not in the cards for most enterprise level companies with tens of thousands of devices out there.