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Locky Virus problems!!!!
- Thread starter rcook99
- Start date
We believe it came from an email attachment. If you ever get an email that asks you to "Enable Macros" DON'T DO IT! I do remember getting an email and having it ask me to enable macros and 2 days later it popped up on my computer.
WildWestDesigns
Active Member
Wilcom before X6 as X6 is inter grated into Wilcom. Wilcom is going to be expecting to be primary.
If you are able to, deactivate 5.5, before reinstalling.
Evan
Thanks for the help, yes we are gonna do that just before we reformat the drive. Does X8 work with Wilcom yet. Considering the upgrade as it has some nice features?
WildWestDesigns
Active Member
No, Wilcom has been really behind the ball in updating their ES program. There should have been a new one a year after X7 to work with X7, but it still hasn't shown up yet.
They did release a hobby/craft version and they are really hocking that.
The only thing that I can think of is that there are going to be pretty significant changes in how they do things to warrant this much of a digression from their working release schedule for at least the past 3 releases.
decalman
New Member
WildWestDesigns
Active Member
There are lots of vectors to sneak in a virus, they don't have to be the traditional attachments.
Sometimes remotely hosted pictures can be used as vectors. Website links can be used.
There was actually a "scare" in the Linux community of a virus being used in browser viewed PDFs.
My suggestion is to strip down all abilities of an email (or browser client) to the bare essentials or at least strip down the known vectors of virus (flash plugins, remotely hosted files that require download to be viewed in emails etc).
No matter what the OS is, if your connected, you run this risk of getting a virus/malware (some differentiate between the 2, it's small differences, bottom line, I don't want either one on my computer).
I'm thankful I've never had a computer hit with ransomware, but I do know others who have. It's just another reason to back up data regularly and save it in more than one place. Various "analog" problems can take your data too. Hard discs can fail without warning. A thief could break in your shop and steal a computer. Perhaps the building burns down or gets hit by a tornado. Either way the computer is gone along with the data stored in it. If you have back ups on and off your work site you'll still have your data and be able to get operations back to normal faster.
Criminals are doing big business spreading malware. Ransomware is one of the most insidious forms of it ever created. Long ago "black hat" crackers did a bunch of this stuff for the fun of vandalizing other people's computers. Making money is the main incentive now. Some do the hacking for other evil purposes, like stalking. Every computer user must realize as long as his computer is connected to the Internet it is potentially exposed to all sorts of evil. No system (not even a Mac) is perfectly safe.
It would be nice if law enforcement could do something about this very costly problem, but they're largely powerless against it. Many of the black hats do their work in countries like Russia and China, where the US has no extradition treaties. So when the FBI, Microsoft or whoever is able to clearly identify a black hat criminal the police in those countries smile and do nothing. In the end the only defense is "white hat" crackers finding security holes and telling Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc. about them and educating end users to be street smart about surfing the web.
Some of my friends are into getting torrents of pirated movies, music, cracked software, etc. I warn them that's a very good way to get a computer system hosed with malware. Criminals put a bunch of that stuff out there as bait.
Criminals are doing big business spreading malware. Ransomware is one of the most insidious forms of it ever created. Long ago "black hat" crackers did a bunch of this stuff for the fun of vandalizing other people's computers. Making money is the main incentive now. Some do the hacking for other evil purposes, like stalking. Every computer user must realize as long as his computer is connected to the Internet it is potentially exposed to all sorts of evil. No system (not even a Mac) is perfectly safe.
It would be nice if law enforcement could do something about this very costly problem, but they're largely powerless against it. Many of the black hats do their work in countries like Russia and China, where the US has no extradition treaties. So when the FBI, Microsoft or whoever is able to clearly identify a black hat criminal the police in those countries smile and do nothing. In the end the only defense is "white hat" crackers finding security holes and telling Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc. about them and educating end users to be street smart about surfing the web.
Some of my friends are into getting torrents of pirated movies, music, cracked software, etc. I warn them that's a very good way to get a computer system hosed with malware. Criminals put a bunch of that stuff out there as bait.
WildWestDesigns
Active Member
You have to remember too, that some of these will actually affect networked harddrives as well. Both those that are mapped and those that are on the network, but not mapped to the infected computer.
That's the stigma with torrents. Sharing via KTorrent or Transmission isn't in of itself illegal (or bad, in fact torrent sharing is fairly efficient means of sharing large files), it's what is shared.
Bare in mind, a nasty virus was just targeting Mac systems using the Transmission program.
While, I don't use torrents, I still understand and appreciate their function (if used properly). Gnome DEs come with Transmission, but I always uninstall it.
Those and Hijack This! and ComboFix are a godsend. You have to know how and when to use them, but they are great tools to bust up the nasties.
SightLine
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While nothing is 100% secure other than totally staying disconnected from the internet and disabling any means of adding files to a system (USB ports disabled, etc) there are things you should all do to help prevent these sort of things. We use multiple levels of protection. First line of defense is a true commercial grade perimeter intrusion protection system. Think of it as a little home wireless router but with a LOT more capabilities. We use a device from Checkpoint (we just upgraded to their small business 730 wireless model), it provides not only all of the most rudimentary and basic firewall functions that a typical home router provides but also has many other features like built in anti-virus, email spam filtering, anti-bot, IPS, full URL filtering (all company computers are blocked from porn sites, etc), secure encrypted VPN. This level of protection comes at a cost though - the device is not cheap compared to home class routers and daily updates for all of its filtering capabilities also has an annual cost. https://www.checkpoint.com/products/700-security-appliances/index.html
Then on top of this you want a top notch antivirus software on the actual computers that not only blocks viruses at the system level but actively inspects email, email attachments, and web browsing. Of course also don't use a Windows account with full admin permissions. Safer to deal with the annoying prompts when you want to install something.
Either way - glad you had a good copy of all your client files OP and are getting back up and going.
Then on top of this you want a top notch antivirus software on the actual computers that not only blocks viruses at the system level but actively inspects email, email attachments, and web browsing. Of course also don't use a Windows account with full admin permissions. Safer to deal with the annoying prompts when you want to install something.
Either way - glad you had a good copy of all your client files OP and are getting back up and going.
WildWestDesigns
Active Member
I think this is perhaps the biggest single thing that most Windows users do and it's perhaps the most risk exposing thing that they can do.
One thing that I like about Fedora is that you have 2 levels. You have the typical user level that most are familiar with and then you have the super user level which is 100% access to everything (and you can damage your OS install if you don't know what you are doing). While there are still malware/viruses that can work on the non-root level, you can still stop them from doing full blown system wide damage.