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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 Hyperturtle on Friday October 30 2015, @05:19PM

    by Hyperturtle (2824) on Friday October 30 2015, @05:19PM (#256552)

    Yes indeedy!

    My goal really was to provide for posterity a description from someone like you (and me) that having a network share to store backups on doesn't mean it's a backup -- it means its another copy.

    People mistake raid for backups, and copies for backups, and indeed a raid can host copies of backups, and you can backup copies onto a raid, and if you have a raid 10, you have a parity copy hardware backup of those drives in raid 0 and... I didn't think you made the mistake.

    I had a day of dealing with stupid, so please pardon if I stooped to an uninformative level. I would mod your reply informative, but I wanted to let you know that I see you answered my question and it is informative.

    Lots of people out there, despite all the drum beating, do not get it, and other people still beat the drum at the whiff of others not getting it.

    (my replying again doesn't win us points, though, but at least I am happy, right? well if that's not so good--think of all the posterity you helped!)

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