No More Ransom helping ransomware victims

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As soon as you become a victim of a ransomware attack, the very first thought that hits your mind is, should we pay a ransom to unlock the database? But law enforcement and a project named ‘No More Ransom’ is discouraging this deed and asking the victim to look for other ways, such as to use the data backup for recovery or use the services of the website named ‘No More Ransom’.

Entering its 6th year, the project has now helped millions of ransomware victims to decrypt their databases- all at zero cost.

Starting in July 2016, the website has served as an online repository where the victims can get guidance on how to proceed when cyber attacked with malware. And will also help present a decryption key to file-encrypting malware attacks launched by renowned ransomware groups such as Maze, Noway, Atomsilo, Egregor, GandCrab, Sekhmet,Lockfile, Babuk, Ragnarok, Synack and Revil aka Sodinokibi.

It is a website that partners with over 188 security research firms and has been created in partnership with Europol, Dutch National Police, Kaspersky, and McAfee.

Over the past 6 years, the web repository has helped around 10 million people by offering them free decryptors and helped them from incurring €1.8 billion in losses because of cyber attacks.

To those who are unfamiliar with what this website does, here’s a gist of it. All you have to do is use the Crypto Sheriff Tool from the No More Ransom website and upload two encrypted files and the ransomware note. And then leave the rest to the tool.

The tool sieves throughout its database to find a match to encryption code and offer a free decryption key at zero cost, along with the steps to follow thereafter.

Sometimes, the decryption tool might be unavailable and so the tool will ask the user to visit back in the future for unlocking.

Europol is asking online users to stay safe from ransomware attacks by keeping a backup copy of stored data, never clicking on links sent by unknown senders via email and messages, and opening no attachments. It is also encouraging users to install threat monitoring solutions and use a 2FA to protect their user accounts. And if the case, anything unfortunate, happens, it is encouraging users to report the crime to law enforcement and search for a decryption key on the No More Ransom platform.

 

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Naveen Goud is a writer at Cybersecurity Insiders covering topics such as Mergers & Acquisitions, Startups, Cyber Attacks, Cloud Security and Mobile Security

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