Any experience here with being infected by Cryptowall?

Personally? Or anyone you know being asked to pay ransom?

[weeks]

This is the most email article today on The New York Times:

How my mom got hacked
CryptoWall 2.0 is the latest immunoresistant strain of a larger body of viruses known as ransomware. The virus is thought to infiltrate your computer when you click on a legitimate-looking attachment or through existing malware lurking on your hard drive, and once unleashed it instantly encrypts all your files, barring access to a single photo or tax receipt....
[nytimes.com...]

I got a popup with something like this a week or so ago that did, indeed, lock up my computer but I just did a hard shutdown and my Mac (Maverick OS) cranked back up. It is running sluggish, but then it had been.

Googling "CryptoWall" or "Cryptowall 2.0" sent me to the NYT article, then a lot of other sites (news and web) which I I'd have to call second or third-tier. (On the news side, for example, it goes to press releases on the first page.) Seems it has been around since this summer, so I'd think it would be a bigger deal than I saw. Now that NYT has featured it, expect to hear more about it and to get questions from your clients (you are expert on security, right?) and your mother.

Kaspersky.com had nothing on it. This is what I found at SANS, but it is six months old:
[isc.sans.edu...]

Only thing useful (so far) I have learned: Good sons make sure their mom's computer is backed up on a harddrive in the house, not on the cloud.

[edited by: weeks at 7:52 pm (utc) on Jan 4, 2015]

[Leosghost]

Surprised that you think a mac got it..all reports say PC only..

[theregister.co.uk...]

IIWY and looking after PCs..look into cryptoprevent ..

I have no connection with it ..but have installed it on a number of windows boxen whose users ask me to "fix" stuff ..so far, especially given their "click happiness"..they have no infections..

NYT thinks that this is "news" ?..it was ( in October 2014 )..but 3 months later, is now "old news"..

You might find this background article of use in understanding the variant..
[bleepingcomputer.com...]

[weeks]

OK, those are great links. Thx, Leosghost.

The NYT article I linked to above is saying that Macs are at risk, but I cannot find any other solid reports of it happening. SANS and others (including the excellent Register report above) has a post saying it is using Silverlight, Flash and Java exploits via ads on websites, so I guess Macs might could be attacked, maybe. There seems to be no agreement on how a computer gets infected. Emails are mentioned often, talking about exc. files.

The point about "this being news" is well taken. It's interesting we're not easily finding anything recent from federal law enforcement on this. A search on the FBI site shows nothing since June.

I did find this unhappy recent item on eWeek, a source I consider to be reliable:
[eweek.com...]

[bill]

I've used the CryptoPrevent on several PCs as well and so far nothing has bitten. It's also good to run your browsers in a sandbox or virtual machine if possible if you're not going to block JavaScript and those sort of easily exploitable plugins.

[engine]

Although this is not new news, it's still highly relevant as many will continue to get caught out by this. The chances of most of us getting caught out by this is slim, however, it's out there, and it could happen.

It reminds me to run regular backups.