The Ever-Present Threat of Ransomware

Despite its convenience, the internet can be a dangerous place to navigate. There are plenty of scammers, fraudsters, and crooks operating on the web, utilizing countless tools to gain your personal information or extort money out of you. One of the most difficult cyberattacks to deal with is ransomware, a particularly nasty tactic that can do a lot of damage to not just an individual computer, but an entire organization.

What is ransomware?

To understand ransomware, you need to know what malware is. Malware is malicious software or a computer program designed to infiltrate and damage computers without the user’s consent. It’s an umbrella term used to describe the threats that can menace your computer, such as a virus, spyware, worms, or trojans. The most common form of malware is software downloaded from the internet somehow that causes pop-up adverts to potentially flood your computer screen.

Ransomware is a more malicious type of malware, as it’s designed to deny the victim access to their files, making the computer virtually unusable. The reason for doing this is that the individuals responsible for the ransomware can then charge a ransom fee to unlock the computer, extorting the victim for money, or, more recently, for Bitcoin.

These types of attacks have affected both individuals and big organizations, with the biggest attack to date crippling the UK’s National Health Service in 2017.

There are two distinct types of ransomware attacks. The first is ‘crypto-ransomware,’ which encrypts the files on an infected computer, meaning it scrambles the data into a code that only the attacker knows how to crack. The other is a ‘locker ransomware,’ which doesn’t encrypt the files but instead locks the user out of the computer, essentially bricking it off from use until the ransom is paid.

How does it spread?

In order to perform a successful ransomware attack, the criminal needs first to get inside the target’s network or computer to download the malicious file or link. The easiest way to do this is through phishing emails – emails designed to mimic those from big organizations such as banks to entice people to send personal details, or in this case, to click a link to begin a download. It’s easy to be caught out by these emails, as all it takes is one click to install it onto a computer.

If that computer is also connected to a network, the ransomware will spread to as many connected computers and servers as it can, causing massive disruption and damage to the devices.

How to fix it

Removing ransomware can be a particularly tricky endeavor, even for IT specialists. If the fee isn’t too expensive, it might be tempting to simply pay up and hope that the fraudsters unlock your files, but this isn’t guaranteed, as the criminals can easily take the money and run. Additionally, doing this provides the hackers with your personal banking details, which they may use in the future to cause havoc in your life even more.

In the best-case scenario, it can take IT experts days to get all your systems up and running again, and even longer to fill the gap in your security that allowed access to the computer or network in the first place. Recovering from a ransomware attack can be extremely time-consuming and costly, as building an entirely new IT environment from the ground up is pretty expensive, not to mention that for businesses, the downtime can impact your productivity.

Due to this, it’s clear that the best way to fix a ransomware attack is to prevent one in the first place.

How to Prevent it

The best way to prevent an attack is to make yourself look less like an easy target. There are numerous steps you can take to help prevent ransomware attacks and safeguard yourself and your business, but the key techniques that should definitely be put in place are:

• Install anti-malware services on all computers.
This is the best way to protect yourself from ransomware attacks, as this software helps remove all kinds of malware once it’s detected and immediately separates malicious software for your legitimate applications. Only download anti-malware software from official, trusted brands and sites, as some malware is cheeky and masquerade as anti-malware software in order to be downloaded.

Our sincere recommendation for users of WordPress would be the Emergency Recovery Script.

• Create and maintain a regular backup of your files and information
This will help prevent an attack from affecting you as badly as it could. By having backups of the files that the ransomware is trying to lock away, you’ll be able to reduce the downtime and use these files to carry on with your work while the issue is being dealt with.

• Use a firewall
A firewall is a system used to prevent unauthorized access to private networks, so it’s a great way to stop ransomware infestation. Firewalls can be implemented both through hardware and software, or for maximum protection, a combination of both.