Help!!!!!!! All my files have been encrypted.

Forums › Desktop computing › Help!!!!!!! All my files have been encrypted.

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BDFL - Memuneh
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#1253012 7-Mar-2015 21:21

You can go down the village and buy a new TV. People who don't make backups don't have where to source their data - photos, videos of family, etc.

Not everyone live in your perfect world.

As I said before: backup, backup, backup, backup. Crashplan is great. Also a local external drive. Make a copy online and two local copies. Have two drives, rotate them. Unfortunately not everyone follow this until something bad happens.

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richms

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#1253013 7-Mar-2015 21:22

And disable upnp on your router to stop all this hidden port fowarding crap that happens with apps and devices that invites things like this to happen.

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#1253014 7-Mar-2015 21:22

richms: Plex does open itself up to the internet via upnp by default. so I would expect that to be the culprit. And plex users are the most likly to have a large media collection.

I had manually set a different port in the Plex server settings. How likely is it that it was still Plex

Jase2985

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#1253015 7-Mar-2015 21:23

KiwiNZ: So if someone broke into your home, took your TV and other family stuff, dropped you a note saying pay me $1,000 and you can have it back you would pay up?

if it was a known scam and it was cheaper than my insurance/buying the new stuff, or some irriplacable stuff then yes i probably would.

would you like to loose all your family photos from the last x years?

your logic is not very rational

these are known scams, people pay, they get the password. its a business model, and like pretty much every other post here in case you missed it has said

richms

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#1253020 7-Mar-2015 21:30

RickW:
richms: Plex does open itself up to the internet via upnp by default. so I would expect that to be the culprit. And plex users are the most likly to have a large media collection.

I had manually set a different port in the Plex server settings. How likely is it that it was still Plex

Hard to say. But there had to be a way for them to get in. Not exposing servers to the internet is the first step in not having people compromise them.

Richard rich.ms

richms

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#1253021 7-Mar-2015 21:30

Jase2985:
KiwiNZ: So if someone broke into your home, took your TV and other family stuff, dropped you a note saying pay me $1,000 and you can have it back you would pay up?

if it was a known scam and it was cheaper than my insurance/buying the new stuff, or some irriplacable stuff then yes i probably would.

would you like to loose all your family photos from the last x years?

your logic is not very rational

these are known scams, people pay, they get the password. its a business model, and like pretty much every other post here in case you missed it has said

Big difference between stuff being taken and data being encrypted.

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#1253024 7-Mar-2015 21:37

RickW:
richms: Plex does open itself up to the internet via upnp by default. so I would expect that to be the culprit. And plex users are the most likly to have a large media collection.

I had manually set a different port in the Plex server settings. How likely is it that it was still Plex

Most likely explanation is you ran something downloaded from the inter tubes (or someone else did), I've heard lots of torrent sites sometimes try to send you an executable rather than the torrent file people get caught out.
Probably you log into your computer with more than normal user rights as well yes ? (administrator, power user etc) ... I always use a mere mortal user for day to day computer use and only log in with the admin account if I need to install something, good habit.

richms

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#1253038 7-Mar-2015 21:42

If you have write access to the media and the backup set then any software you run can screw things up like this.

I do my downloading on a seperate PC I VNC into which is firewalled off from the rest of my lan, then FTP the files off it to where I store them because of stuff like this happening. Might have to up the game somewhat more tho.

Richard rich.ms

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#1253048 7-Mar-2015 22:03

KiwiNZ: So if someone broke into your home, took your TV and other family stuff, dropped you a note saying pay me $1,000 and you can have it back you would pay up?

umm .. try -

someone fences your house locks up the cage and say pay $1000 for the key otherwise go sleep outside forever

alexx

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#1253073 7-Mar-2015 23:12

Just don't take this computer through customs.
They might demand that you hand over the passwords. :)

Good to see that you can manage without paying the ransom.

#include <standard.disclaimer>

nakedmolerat

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#1253078 7-Mar-2015 23:52

Jase2985:
KiwiNZ: I would not trust a criminal to be suddenly honest, I would not reward a crime.paying them only encourages, don't pay.

and then how would you recommend getting your files back?

He does not and never will have an answer for that. As stated, he will not pay and be tough like a Rambo or John McClane.

OP: Glad that you still able to keep those pics... I saw this thread earlier, and I am contemplating of printing out important pics.

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#1253097 8-Mar-2015 00:43

Mark:
RickW:
richms: Plex does open itself up to the internet via upnp by default. so I would expect that to be the culprit. And plex users are the most likly to have a large media collection.

I had manually set a different port in the Plex server settings. How likely is it that it was still Plex

Most likely explanation is you ran something downloaded from the inter tubes (or someone else did), I've heard lots of torrent sites sometimes try to send you an executable rather than the torrent file people get caught out.
Probably you log into your computer with more than normal user rights as well yes ? (administrator, power user etc) ... I always use a mere mortal user for day to day computer use and only log in with the admin account if I need to install something, good habit.

Hey mark, all of our library consists of uncompressed bluray and the odd dvd backups hence why it's not a big deal to re backup the lost movies and TV shows, the server is set to auto logon with a admin account as we are using a free version of a ram disk software for the timeshifting file for live tv, and for the life of me I cannot figure out how to run as a service. I'll look into the standard account when I install all the software back on her tomorrow. Can't remember the last time I downloaded a torrent :-)

I'm in the process of copying all the backed up data back onto the formatted drives.

My partner is not happy about having no live TV, tv series, movies or music tho :-) what ever did we do without htpc's lol

MikeB4

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#1253112 8-Mar-2015 07:06

nakedmolerat:
Jase2985:
KiwiNZ: I would not trust a criminal to be suddenly honest, I would not reward a crime.paying them only encourages, don't pay.

and then how would you recommend getting your files back?

He does not and never will have an answer for that. As stated, he will not pay and be tough like a Rambo or John McClane.

OP: Glad that you still able to keep those pics... I saw this thread earlier, and I am contemplating of printing out important pics.

I don't recall ever saying I would "tough Iike a Rambo or John McClane"

I would not reward extortion, I would get a professional to try an recover my drive and if that was not successful mark it up to lesson learnt for not taking precautions or back up etc.

Here is a crazy notion, lets give peace a chance.

Sideface

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#1253119 8-Mar-2015 07:26

KiwiNZ: So if someone broke into your home, took your TV and other family stuff, dropped you a note saying pay me $1,000 and you can have it back you would pay up?

The difference is that burglars would face a high risk being caught if they returned your stuff.
With ransomware there is no such risk to the extortionist.

Sideface

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#1253121 8-Mar-2015 07:34

KiwiNZ: I would not reward extortion, I would get a professional to try an recover my drive and if that was not successful mark it up to lesson learnt for not taking precautions or back up etc.

so you would essentually pay someone more to try and recover something that is essentially unrecoverable, just to avoid paying the ransom. sounds logical.

if you would be happy loosing years of family photos, thats your choice, but for most thats not really an option

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