A reader in the UK forwarded me an article from the BBC this week – it relates to the Crypto Locker virus that we have dicsussed a few times before.
It seems that some security experts have managed, by luck really, to gain access to the encryption key used to encrypt unfortunate victims data, enabling them to use this information to help other victims decrypt their own data!
If you are unfortunate enough to have been affected by the Crypto virus and still have your encrypted data, you can visit the portal at www.decryptcryptolocker.com and use the information there to gain access to your data again. The portal asks for your email address and one of the encrypted files. It then uses the information found by the security team to generate a recovery program (an antidote) that will repair all of your infected files – great stuff!
Just as an update to the story, although it’s unfortunate that the criminals who created the virus in the first place made lots and lots of money, the Russian behind the virus, Evgeniy Bogachev, has been charged by the FBI; its estimated that over 500,000 computers have been infected, each potentially being charged 400 euros to be unlocked (thats a potential 200 million euros. Even if only 1 percent of their victims paid up, that still 2 million euros!)
Another thing that seems to be going around at the moment is a rather annoying AVG update – I say annoying as AVG is software that we at BlueMoon have always recommended, however this update has fooled quite a lot of our readers into upgrading to the full paid for version when they have not wanted to.
Essentially what happens is that you receive a message on the screen from AVG saying that there is an update available and would you like to install it – the obvious answer is yes and of course, you should install updates of this kind – nothing wrong there.
The issue comes during the installation, a box appears on the screen as part of the standard install routine asking you whether you want to install the free version or the Internet Security Trial (marked as full protection). This option is selected by default and if you’re not being very careful about where you click you will end up installing the trial version of the full edition of AVG on your computer – nothing at all wrong with that if you want it, it’s a great product, but if you don’t want to have to pay for your antivirus then this is not the option for you.
If you do accidentally upgrade to the trial version then you can easily downgrade again just use the “uninsatall a program” option from the control panel to uninsatall AVG, when you start the uninstallation process you will see an option to “downgrade to the free version” – but it’s easier not to get caught out in the first place.