Held to ransom

[mudnut]

My puter crashed ( I'm using my wife's at the moment) and a nice little massage saying that I only have a shareware version of ...... and if I want to fix my puter I have to fork out $$$$. I Shut the flamin' thing down and handed it to a Tech-head mate. He said if I had paid the theivin' buggers the computer would have worked fine for twelve months then TA DAAA! Same thing.
This is my first encounter with such a low mob on the web. I've been told that no virus protection will stop this from happening again, so any advice? (Appologies now if I'm slow to reply, account of puter availability.)

[Maxhead]

Yeah, its been happening a lot and a lot of people but mainly businesses have been paying $$$ to get their files back. Basically they( the hackers) encrypt all your files so they're unusable till you pay. Apparently this encryption type originated in Russian military so nearly uncrackable.

oh yeah, advice...buy a new lappy...lol


I think this story was on current affair some time back http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-12-10/hackers-target-gold-coast-medical-centre/4418676

[mudnut]

Damnski Iski Willski notski payski!!! I'll see what my mate has up his sleeve, I think he's gunna wipe the puter and start from scratch. I'm glad I don't use the puter for anything other than this forum and photos, which are saved on disc.

[Maxhead]

Damnski Iski Willski notski payski!!! I'll see what my mate has up his sleeve, I think he's gunna wipe the puter and start from scratch. I'm glad I don't use the puter for anything other than this forum and photos, which are saved on disc.

Yep, that will fix it. I now pay google to store my files up on the cloud so I have a backup. They could probably hack that as well but would be a little harder trying to break into Google storage systems....lol

[AB]

I had a similar thing last year with companies computers. Google is your friend here, google the words that pop up on your computer, read through at least 2 pages of the results and see what others did to resolve it. There's thousands of these buggers out there but no doubt someone got stung just like you from the same mob and there is a fix somewhere on the net.

I ended up finding some files that needed removing and all was good again.

Start googling mate!

[megatexture]

But if they can get in your comp they prob have logins also

[snewin]

We had something similar happen. I went to Harvey Norman and got a 2 Tb external drive on special for $90. Everything, and I mean everything goes on it. All our photos and videos. Downloaded movies etc. Every now and again I backup the entire laptop on it. We've had our main computer shit itself and didn't care cos it was all on the drive.

[mudnut]

Gotta get off this machine so thanks all, will see ya when I'm lookin' at a screen.

[mudski]

Haha! I was around at a clients house fixing their puta and the phone rings. My client answers it, he's like "what?, what!" and hands the phone to me. I get on and start talking to this person and they were trying to tell me that they could see my computer, and see that its infected with a virus and they would like to fix it over the phone right now for a fee. All they needed was my permission to do so. I asked this person the IP address of the computer I'm on right now, he was like, "errr, uhmm" and rattled off some random IP address which was totally different to the clients IP. After a bit of mucking with him he got a bit pissed off and started to abuse me and shout "thanks for wasting my time!" and hung up.
How's that hey? They rang right at the time I was there at the clients house fixing their computer for a totally unrelated problem.
What you have mudnut is more than likely a trojan which just brings up these annoying messages and wants you to pay to get it removed by the people who put in on there in the first place. Harmless but annoying.

[taslucas]

We had something similar happen. I went to Harvey Norman and got a 2 Tb external drive on special for $90. Everything, and I mean everything goes on it. All our photos and videos. Downloaded movies etc. Every now and again I backup the entire laptop on it. We've had our main computer shit itself and didn't care cos it was all on the drive.

Same here but I have two HDs one I keep one at a mates incase my house burns down. I have over 7800 photos and over 3500 videos, all mine, all taken by my various mobile phones over the years. It's my life in a HD lol

FanTapstic!

[mudski]

Same here but I have two HDs one I keep one at a mates incase my house burns down. I have over 7800 photos and over 3500 videos, all mine, all taken by my various mobile phones over the years. It's my life in a HD lol

FanTapstic!
Yep I got here 6TB, in a NAS for my movies, 346 of them, and business files. Done in Raid 5 so if one drive fails out of the three 2TB drives the fourth 2tb drive kicks in and rebuilds the array. Then I have another NAS with 4tb, 2 x 2tb drives which is my torrent storage. Getting full though, 346gb left...Both NAS' can be access my any of my, erm, two HTPC's, 1 x gaming desktop, and four laptops at any given time. Then I have all my business files copied onto a separate drive which stays at my dad's house in his safe. So if my house burns downs its only the movies and porn I have lost...:)
Its one thing I alway hound to my clients home computers. Get backup storage for all your photo's. I had a client from Kyneton who lost a hard drive to mechanical failure, it had over 3000 photos from her family all over the world, some dating back as far as the 1900's. She pleaded for me to get the photos but there was nothing i could you. Except give her the details of someone who could, but they charge per mb, NOT gb to recover data. So imagine how much it was going to cost her when an average hi res photo is say around 4mb in size, and she said to me she had over 3000!!!

[mudnut]

Gee, that was quick. Gave this puter to my mate this morning, and got it back this arvo. The trojan was far from harmless, it crashed everything. But just in the off chance, everything I say must now be taken with a grain of salt, in case it is an imposter. :-p. At one stage of my life I might have had a bit of interest in puters,but now I treat 'em as a black box. Thanks for your posts fellas. When I get a chance to find out how my mate fixed the prob, I might pass it on.

[megatexture]

you can get flash drives in fire proof/water proof safes that can plug straight in and you dont have to worry about your house burning down, ive seen a few varietys(big and small) but this one looks prity good
http://www.sentrysafe.com/Products/278/QE5541_FIRE-SAFE

[mudski]

I sometime really wonder how people get these trojans and virus'. Even with virus protection. I have four laptops, one desktop and two HTPC's in this house and not one has a full working virus program. Sorry the wife's lappy is the only one as it came with Norton (which is a POS) but that due for renewal soon. My gaming desktop hasn't had a virus program since I built it 18months ago, my work laptop has a non functional NOD32 on it, my torrent laptop, same, kids laptop, nothing at all and both HTPC's same, nothing. ALL running Windows. And I'm no angel, like most males, when it comes to using teh net. Yeah I look at nudie pics and vids, but I never had gotten a virus. Emails I simply don't open one I don't know who the sender is. I delete it.
I did though, see how long it would take using a spare lappy to get infected with anything by sprawling through the Warez sites (kind of like your dangerous black market, underground sites where you can find really bad shite) and how it was no more than 10 minutes before the laptop was being infected.

[Bloodyaussie]

You hurt my head Mark..... go to bed!!!!

[mudnut]

From memory, a few weeks ago, I miss-clicked onto a site. A window popped up, with an official looking message, (my memory is blank as to what it said) and I stupidly just clicked on the red cross. Promptly forgot it. A while later, I noticed a new icon on the desktop. Didn't take much notice, because the kids sometimes use this machine. i suspect if I had of really looked at the website and message, I should have just shut the internet connection off. From memory, that icon was the hackers, but as I said, I will talk to my mate before I start casting nasturtiums (sorry) at anybody.

[Alitis007]

@MUDSKI: Was that in layman's terms or proper tech words??Lol

Thats a bit full on for me, all i could understand was TB, gaming, norton and POS lol. I just got a Vaio and an external hard drive and hardly ever use them. I upgraded my modem to get the speed pack and got a netgear r6300 router, hard wired my ps3 to it so i can party up with my mates to own noobs and hang sh!t on campers play COD!!! 25529 Guess who i am lmao

[mudski]

Oh NOES!!! COD fan and console too :(!!! Get on BF3 and I'll whoop your ass!!!
Alitis007, laymens terms, I got chit loads of hard drive space and plenty of back space and anti virus programs are a scam in themselves.
I gotta stop drinknig beer during the week...I talk to much...

[Alitis007]

Oh NOES!!! COD fan and console too :(!!! Get on BF3 and I'll whoop your ass!!!
Alitis007, laymens terms, I got chit loads of hard drive space and plenty of back space and anti virus programs are a scam in themselves.
I gotta stop drinknig beer during the week...I talk to much...

Lol never got into BF3 but i heard no lag?? Dedicated servers and not player hosting like COD. How bout BLOPS2 zombies ?? Hahaha i'm a bit rusty these days haven't played in ages.

I figured something like that but didn't know about the anti virus thing but i guess if your not in the game you wouldn't know hey? For simple people who arnt that computer savvy i guess they will just have to keep buying the antivirus programs.

[MC97GQ]

Look out Mudnut, I reckon that russian bloke that buggered your computer might be on this forum, Mudski(sounds very russian to me) and he seems to know a lot about this.

[mudnut]

Look out Mudnut, I reckon that russian bloke that buggered your computer might be on this forum, Mudski(sounds very russian to me) and he seems to know a lot about this.

Haaaaaaa haaaaa haaaaa, the Aussie branch of the KGB?