Cryptolocker can also affect a user’s files that are on drives that are “mapped”, which is to say, they have been given a drive letter (e.g. The malware also spreads via RDP ports that have been left open to the Internet, as well as by email. Initially emails were targeting home users, then small to medium businesses, and now they are going for enterprises as well. Most of the targeted groups have been in the US and the UK, but there is no geographical limit on who can be affected, and plenty of people outside of either country have been hit. Since the beginning of September, the malware authors have sent waves of spam emails targeting different groups. There has been a concerted effort to pump out new variants, keeping up with changes in protection technology, and targeting different groups over time. You may wonder why the big fuss over this one particular ransomware family – in essence, it is because Cryptolocker’s authors have been both nimble and persistent.

Cryptolocker may come on its own (often by email) or by way of a backdoor or downloader, brought along as an additional component. Like a notorious criminal, this malware has been associated with a variety of other bad actors – backdoor Trojans, downloaders, spammers, password-stealers, ad-clickers and the like. The perpetrators of Cryptolocker have been emailing it to huge numbers of people, targeting particularly the US and UK. One specific ransomware threat that has been in the news a lot lately is Cryptolocker (detected by ESET as Win32/Filecoder -check the ESET Knowledge Base for updated information on detection of Cryptolocker and other ransomware). There is a variety of ransomware can get onto a person’s machine, but as always, those techniques either boil down to social engineering tactics or using software vulnerabilities to silently install on a victim’s machine. Sadly, ransomware is becoming an increasingly popular way for malware authors to extort money from companies and consumers alike. Ransomware is malicious software that cyber criminals use to hold your computer or computer files for ransom, demanding payment from you to get them back. 11 things you can be doing to better protect your computers and data from ransomware such as Cryptolocker that is currently targeting businesses big and small.

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