“No More Ransom” Campaign Saves the Day for 2,500 Ransomware Victims Saving Over 1.3 Million Euros.
Ransomware can easily be regarded as the biggest threat of this age as it affects the entire computer system and there is apparently no way to get your data back unless you pay the ransom.
Ransomware is powerful malware that can encrypt portions of data stored on the hard drive or the entire drive(s) so as to force the victim to pay the asking amount in order to get the data decryption code. But the ordeal is about to end for all of us. Or so we hope!
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Thanks to the effective No More Ransom initiative, over 2,500 victims of ransomware were able to decrypt their data. The campaign, which was launched just three months before, has managed to save more than $1million or 1.3 million Euros.
“The general advice is not to pay the ransom. By sending your money to cyber criminals you’ll only confirm that ransomware works, and there’s no guarantee you’ll get the decryption key you need in return.”
It must be noted that the No More Ransom campaign was launched on July 25th, 2016 collectively by Europol, the Dutch National Police, Intel Security, and Kaspersky Lab. Such a high-level cooperation between law enforcement agencies from different countries around Europe has never been witnessed before. The private sector is also on board with the ongoing campaign.
Eurojust is supporting the campaign’s objectives along with the European Commission. The sole objective of this campaign is to help out the victims of ransomware. On the campaign’s online portal, victims can receive all sorts of information from understanding the way ransomware attacks and performs encryption to how to decrypt data and how to protect their computers from ransomware in future.
With the efforts of law enforcement agencies, 2,500 people were able to decrypt their data and didn’t have to pay the ransom, which is no ordinary feat. This was made possible by the decryption tools available at the campaign’s website. The main tools at the site include WildFire Decryptor, CoinVault, RannohDecryptor, RakhniDecryptor, and Shade.
The campaign has received a lot of praise and following from law enforcement agencies. Recently 13 more countries’ agencies joined the campaign to thwart the ransomware threat. The new members include the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Ireland, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Switzerland, Latvia, Hungary, Portugal and Spain, etc.
It is also expected that more agencies and private organizations will become part of this campaign in the coming months, due to which it will be possible to get hold of a wider range of free decryption tools. This way, many more victims of ransomware will be receiving help for retrieving their data and saving their hard earned money from going into the pockets of cyber-criminals.
Also Read: New Lockscreen Ransomware Targeting Android Devices
There is no doubt about the fact that ransomware is currently the top threat for law enforcement across Europe since over two-thirds of the EU member states are continuously threatened by these attacks. The majority of targets are unsuspecting users but many a time high profile organizations, corporate networks, and government institutions have also been targeted.