Steve Dotto here.
How the heck are you doing this fine day?
Me?
I am feeling a little but cautious because my Mac community is under siege from a new
virus attack, a new hacking attack.
Actually, it’s not all that big a deal yet.
Only about 7,000 users have been attacked but it is something new.
It’s been around for a while in the Windows world but it’s new to us here in the Mac
world so I thought I’d spend a few minutes today and talk to you about ransomware on
DottoTech.
The Apple community has always been a little bit smug in the fact that we don’t get attacked
by quite as many viruses as do our Windows brethren.
Having said that, there are certainly some nefarious code out there that does target
Macintoshes and for the first time we’re getting reports of a form of ransomware, which
is being focused on the Mac community.
Now originally it’s only hit about 7,000 users so it’s not very widespread and people
who have had the issue are primarily people who have been downloading torrents, downloading
content through the torrent site which is a little bit of an easier path I suppose for
the miscreants to get their malicious code on our systems.
However, this is a very concerning type of virus because it’s not just vandalism anymore
where they cause your computer to overwrite data and lose data, etc., but instead, this
has commerce behind it.
Yes, indeed.
Now whoever created the new virus Ke Ranger has a financial bent.
They hold your data ransom.
What happens with this virus is once your computer gets infected, it goes looking for
certain types of documents on your computer and then it encrypts those documents.
In other words, it makes it so that we can no longer read those documents and you can
lose access to those documents unless you pay the ransom.
You’re paying the people who created it a Bitcoin is what they’re asking which is
some USD 400.
It’s not cheap.
They ask for a Bitcoin which is theoretically untraceable hence their ability to stay behind
the cloak of anonymity.
They ask for that Bitcoin and then they will give you to unencrypt your hard drive.
Now if you are not a person that is not downloading torrents, you’ve probably have not been
exposed to this in the future but it is something you should be aware of.
So there are two messages out of this.
The first is of course be very careful about where you’re going and where you’re getting
your content from.
The second is backup, backup, backup.
The best defense you can have against this sort of an attack is by having a complete
backup of all of your data, your operating system and everything.
I say it so often hat we need to be backing up all of our valuable information, our content
and our photos but here is another example, right in front of us, a good reason for us
to make sure we have a good backup strategy in place.
So take it for what it’s worth.
Make sure that you are backed up.
If you are concerned that you might have been compromised by this particular virus, our
friends over at Life Hacker have a security alert on how to identify and remove Ke Ranger
ransomware from your Mac.
So we will be posting that in the comments area here in the video.
Well, I hope you found today’s video to be useful and a wake-up call.
Now there are three ways for you to stay in touch with us here on DottoTech.
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Till next time, I am Steve Dotto.
Have fun storming the castle!