Jesse, I assume it was email thank you? I figure these days paper is surely antiquated, but there was a time when that was seen as preferable/more formal than email. Oh, how things change!
Natter 74: Ready or Not
Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, duct tape, butt kicking, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.
Best wishes for your friend, Matt.
I had a FB friend post an article about how Britain is actually doing well economically after Brexit. While I hope dire economic predictions don't come to bare, it seems a little early to draw conclusions about Brexit since the Brexit hasn't actually happened yet. I expect there will be articles about how Hillary Clinton is a terrible President in December this year. Well, unless Trump wins.
Jesse, I assume it was email thank you?
Yep. Occasionally I still get one on paper, and now I think that's weird!
So my poor mother's computer is being held hostage and they may not be able to get her stuff back. :(
Ransomware?
Cass, this is horrifying. I can't even imagine how hard this is for you and your family. I'm wishing for the best.
Matt, good thoughts going out for your friend.
Ransomware?
Obnoxious stuff. It hits our users on a regular basis. I've dealt personally with 7 people this year with their data locked down.
So my poor mother's computer is being held hostage and they may not be able to get her stuff back. :(
That happened to one of my team members last year. Ugh. I would not expect that situation to resolve well.
Occasionally I still get one on paper, and now I think that's weird!
Totally.
Ransomware?
Apparently.
So what should she have done? And how do you protect yourself?
From what I understand there is a toolkit that can unencrypt some cases of ransomware. Apparently some, but not all, of these guys (or gals I suppose, let's just go with scum). Anyhow some of the scum that make ransomware aren't great with encryption and simply used random values to generate keys. Since it goes on to encrypt files that creates timestamps on the files and the default random value seed is often the current time, it's possible to guess the keys from the time when the encryption started.
This is why you should use an entropy store instead of just generating a random number.