Rovae

Ransomware is a type of malicious software, or malware, designed to deny access to a computer system or data until a ransom is paid. Ransomware typically spreads through phishing emails or by unknowingly visiting an infected website. Ransomware can be traced back to 1989 when the “AIDS virus” was used to extort funds from recipients of the ransomware. Payments for that attack were made by mail to Panama, at which point a decryption key was also mailed back to the user.

Ransomware preventions

1. Take backups of your data regularly.
2. Update your software and anti-virus regularly.
3. beware of clicking on links in emails from strangers or opening email attachments.

WannaCry Ransomware

A powerful Microsoft exploit was leveraged to create a worldwide ransomware worm that infected over 250,000 systems before a killswitch was tripped to stop its spread. The impact of WannaCry was pronounced in some cases. For example, the National Health Service in the U.K. was heavily affected and was forced to effectively take services offline during the attack. Published reports suggested that the damages caused to the thousands of impacted companies might exceed $1 billion.

How to remove ransomware

There is no guarantee that a sufferer can stop a ransomware attack and regain their data; still, there are techniques that may work in some scenarios. For example, a sufferer can stop and reboot their system in safe mode, install an anti-virus software, scan the computer and restore the computer to a previous, non-infected state. sufferer could also restore their system from a backup stored on a separate disk. If in the cloud, then the sufferer could reformat disk and restore from a previous backup.