In June 2014, Operation Tovar took down Evgeniy Bogachev, the leader of the gang of hackers behind CryptoLocker. Now is a good time to remind you to always back your files up! Although with many of the infected computers, if the victims didn’t pay up they’d lose all their files. With some of the hacking attempts, System Restore or recovery software worked. The hackers then sent a decryption key in return for a sum of money, usually somewhere from a few hundred pounds up to a couple of grand. Released in September 2013, CryptoLocker spread through email attachments and encrypted the user’s files so that they couldn’t access them. You know in heist movies when the bad guy grabs someone and threatens them in return for money? Ransomware works much like that, except your computer is taken hostage by a faceless bad guy. Ransomware is a kind of malware that takes your files hostage. While most people can rattle off names like ‘Trojan’, ‘viruses’, and ‘spyware’, they’re often not too familiar with ransomware. When it comes to malware, ransomware is the new kid on the block.

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