The week my home network got hit by a cryptolocker in 2017

I had a bad run one Tuesday when every family device lit up with ransom demands because I let my nephew download a cracked game. Cost me $300 in Bitcoin to get my wedding photos back, so now I keep offline backups and never plug unknown drives into anything important.

2 comments

2 Comments

claire_walker18d ago

Three hundred bucks for wedding photos is rough, but calling it "every family device lit up" feels a little dramatic. I've seen people lose way more to bad power supplies frying drives than to actual ransomware attacks. Most cryptolockers target businesses with deep pockets, not some guy's home PC with a cracked game install. A simple Windows Defender scan and a system restore would have fixed most of that mess in an hour. Are you sure you weren't just panicking and paid too fast?

juliag1018d ago

Also, you gotta think about what a system restore actually does. It only rolls back system files and settings, not your personal documents like wedding photos. So if the ransomware encrypted those jpegs, a restore isnt gonna bring them back. And a Windows Defender scan can catch some things, but new ransomware variants slip right past it sometimes. The real point is, once those files are encrypted, you either pay or you lose them unless you have backups. That panic is real when its the only copy of your wedding pics staring at you from a locked screen.