New Ransomware Does The Unforgivable – Forgets How To Unlock Your Files

Ransomware is a whole new level of problems for computer users. Previously malicious software, or malware for short, would spread causing chaos and destruction wherever it could, but ransomware is a little more targeted. Ransomware is designed to stop you from accessing your files and in order to gain access you are normally requested to pay an account a sum of money. With the kind of details you store on your computers these days, can you afford not to pay? Even the FBI say pay the ransom, but what happens when they don’t decrypt your files, granting you access which you’ve just paid a lot of money for. It’s a risk many take and many more will have to suffer thanks to the ransomware Power Worm, which forgets how to decrypt your files.

Encryption is the process in which using a key (similar to a password) you jumble up a file, making it extremely difficult to read or access without knowing the password that was used to encrypt it in the first place. Power worm does the usual, gets into the system and then encrypts your files but thanks to a NULL result in its code it forgets to store the key, meaning even if you pay its impossible to retrieve your files.

Please protect your files with regular backups on an external memory device and be careful when downloading or running any software.

Image courtesy of NSK Inc.