Ransomware is the latest phase in online fraud. Think of it as an old-time mafia shake-down. It amounts to protection money. Your data gets encrypted and you have to pay to unlock your own files. It’s a deplorable practice, but unfortunately also a lucrative one.
And it’s that promise of money that keeps the market for these things going. In fact, a new report claims April was the biggest month yet for this sector of malware.
Enigma Software Group did a study of all infections, covering more than 65 million since April 2013. The results were disturbing. It claims it “found that ransomware in April 2016 more than doubled the total from March 2016. Additionally, ransomware made up a larger percentage of overall infections in April than in any other month in the last three years”.
The trend has resulted in some high-profile attacks, including a hospital being hit. In many cases, it’s both individual users as well as businesses.
“It’s not just businesses that are being hit by ransomware”, says ESG spokesperson Ryan Gerding. “Every day thousands and thousands of people turn on their personal computers only to find their most precious photos and other files have been locked up by bad guys”.
The best defense against these attacks is to backup your data, either in the cloud or on an external drive that you can disconnect from the network, a it propagates across drives and computers to ensure that you have no access to it. There is also the usual advice — think before you click links and keep your system up to date, both OS and software.
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