Lincolnshire CC ransom demand.

wmrcomputers

Stafford PC & laptop repair specialist
Yet another example of why backups are essential both for personal and business users.

I gave a town centre office business some serious advice about complete backup solutions, the speed of recovery etc. only last week. They haven't even responded and I know that they won't - yet they are the first people who will just glare at me if this were ever to become a reality to them when I say that their data is gone for good.

I don't know whether businesses don't see the value of a full backup solution, or whether they are just naive to the realities of "how quick shit can go down".

Beats me!!
 

wmrcomputers

Stafford PC & laptop repair specialist
Lincolnshire CC said:
Chief information officer Judith Hetherington-Smith said only a small number of files were affected.
Err, not quite true love. Try ALL of them. Okay, so you have backups of most - luckily.

Lincolnshire CC said:
She said the authority took action once the malware was identified and shut its systems down.
Bit too late at this point. The Malware wan't identified - it identified itself to you when it had finished doing the damage without you realising it was even happening.

Lincolnshire CC said:
It described the ransomware as "the biggest attack" it had ever experienced, adding it was "zero-day malware", meaning it was previously unknown to security experts.
Really? I'm sure I was speaking about this type of Ransomware on Stafford Forum as long as 12 months ago.

Lincolnshire CC said:
Lincolnshire Police have confirmed they are investigating the attack
Good luck with that, seeing as reports previously suggested that even police forces "paid the bill" as they had no alternative but to do so. They can't track these criminals down due to the complexity of the the bitcoin operation used. They advise people not to pay up as it supports the crime in question by doing so - but the reality is that without a backup you really have no choice if the files are of massive value to you. The only way these types of ransomware creators will be beaten is if nobody pays up due to thorough backups they can fall back on.

I often wonder if I should specialise in business backup systems and spend my days travelling from business to business selling my services... oh wait a minute... they won't listen till it's too late. ;)
 

wmrcomputers

Stafford PC & laptop repair specialist
There's a saying in life that "prevention is better than cure". When talking about computer hard disk failure or severe virus damage then people need to think "cure is better than prevention".
You can't prevent it. At least not 100%. In the case of electronic data, you need to have a cure BEFORE the problem - in other words reliable backups. If anyone reading this runs a business, ask yourself seriously how thorough is your method of backup? How long would it take to get your systems back to a fully useable state if the worse happened? Could your business even survive the downtime?

Sorry I'll try to stop ranting on now. It's just a subject that really annoys me as nobody thinks it will happen to them. Lincolnshire CC are "hoping" that their systems will be up and running next week..... really? You're backups weren't of a type that could be restored in literally just hours??? Shame on you.

<end of rant>
 

tek-monkey

wanna see my snake?
A backup holds no value to most, until the point it is suddenly both invaluable and unobtainable. I have very little I care about, but the few Gbs I do are stored on 2 PCs internally and 2 cloud solutions externally.
 

John Marwood

I ♥ cryptic crosswords
I would wait until the little finger of the council was delivered in an envelope together with some cut out letters from newspapers
 

cj1

Well-Known Forumite
The ransom is only three hundred and fifty quid, apparently.

How many stone balls could they buy with that?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-35453801

Judith Hetherington-Smith, from the council, said: "We are not going to pay... we wouldn't pay a ransom fee."

Assuming she works a five day week, £350 is just less than a day's basic pay for Mrs Hetherington-Smith.
its a £1 million ransom the pic in article is just an example.
 

wmrcomputers

Stafford PC & laptop repair specialist
Even if they paid, the data wouldn't be decrypted.
Quite possibly not. A few people found this out the hard way last time around.

The ransom is only three hundred and fifty quid, apparently.
How many stone balls could they buy with that?
:clap:

A backup holds no value to most, until the point it is suddenly both invaluable and unobtainable. I have very little I care about, but the few Gbs I do are stored on 2 PCs internally and 2 cloud solutions externally.
Spot on. Good lad!

I've started backing up Facebook by printing it out
:lolsmash: It's funny you should say this. Livedrive, the cloud backup service I used to resell pulled an April fools prank some years ago. Here's the video...
 

John Marwood

I ♥ cryptic crosswords
Just in case anyone else wanted to try this in the future the council have very kindly let us all know what they have as their system. ...
'
The council has scanned and checked 458 servers and 70 terabytes of data "to make sure it's clean". '
 
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