Ransomware- Practical Advice To Protect & Recover Using Free Tools
It is the beginning of 2017 and 2016 has been the year of ransomware attacks. This phenomenon is expected to grow even further in 2017 and beyond.
There are concrete strategies and commercial tools available that you can use to protect yourself against these attacks. The purpose of this note is to share free tools to protect against ransomware attacks and options to recover in case you are already hit using free tools.
Protection using free tools
RansomFree is a free tool and it claims to protect against 99% of ransomware strains, including never-before-seen types. This is a good option to use for windows systems. The tool works by identifying the typical pattern of behavior, knowing how and where ransomware will start encrypting files. This enables the tool to stops the encryption attempts targeting local disks, as well as detecting and stopping encryption over shared network drives. This is one of the best freely available option. RansomFree gets installed in 15-20 secs flat. You can download the tool from below link beleow:
Cybereason RansomeFree
Don't worry if you are a Mac OS X user. There is another free tool called RansomWhere which is for Mac users and can be downloaded from the below. This tool is developed by a former NSA staffer and is targeted towards detecting and blocking generic ransomwares.
Recovery options
What are your options if you are already hit by the ransomware? Pay up or else...
You don't have to always pay. There are free decryptor tools available. The best bet here is global No More Ransom (NMR) project. This project was launched in 2016 by the Dutch National Police, Europol and cybersecurity vendors. This is the best example of cooperation between law enforcement agencies and the private sector to fight ransomware together. Enforcement agencies from 26 countries across Europe, as well as The European Commission and cybersecurity specialist companies are part of this project. This is one of the biggest forces created anywhere across the globe to fight ransomware attacks. As on date, there are more than 20 decryptor tools available which you can use to recover from ransomware attacks. You can access these tools from:
This list of tools and resources can only grow further by contributions from all of you and I encourage you to either share your suggestions in the comments section or contact me. Bad guys are so successful because bad guys collaborate, good guys don't and we have to change it. No More Ransom (NMR) project is a great start in this direction.
Dinesh Kumar Aggarwal is Security Architect at The Missing Link Network Integration & Security
Note: The Downloads recommended above have passed an Avast security scan, but Cyber Security Intelligence Ltd accepts no responsibilty for their use.
