So I'm sitting here this afternoon working away on my computer when suddenly I lose the connections to my shared files on our network. No big deal , I thought. I have so many files open that I need to reboot anyway. Didn't help.
It turns out that Larry, somehow picked up a virus on his computer that also affects networked connections. Now, you may be thinking "not too bad, just run the virus scanner." What's worst is that he noticed the ransom note on his screen, but didn't tell me until at least an hour later.
Yea, that won't work. He managed to pick up a really nasty one called Thor. Thor is a ransom-ware virus that encrypts all of the useful files it finds. Little things like web pages, Word documents, etc.
And now you're wondering... "how do I know it was Larry?" His is the only machine affected. Well, that and the shared network disks that he was connected to.
So far, it looks like they are asking for about $400.00 to provide the key to decrypt the files. The problem with ransom-ware is that even paying the money is no guarantee that the will send you what is needed to reclaim your data.
Preliminary assessment shows that I've lost: all our our web pages (can be recovered from live sites), all of my Word documents (including my resume!), all of my custom software that has been written over the past 20 years. In short... I'm screwed.
Yes folks, it's going to be a loooooooooooong night.
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