We often get emails from clients and companies we deal with regularly. The emails look legitimate, however we are concerned they may contain a virus if we open the attachment. Should we be wary?
You are right to be extremely cautious. An aged care facility recently experienced a huge disruption to its entire operation as a result of a computer virus sent through an email. One common and particularly dangerous viruses being experienced world-wide is CrytoWall or a similar virus known as CrytoLocker. They are a ransomware trojan which targets computers running Microsoft Windows.
The virus is a vicious application that stealthily gets into a computer and then tries to trick the user into paying money to a so-called police department. This virus pretends to be a cyber security watch and claims to have detected illegal activities from your machine. Once your PC is affected by this malware, it will show continuous warnings popping up on screen and stating “Your computer has been locked as a result of copyright violation”. Please remember, CrytoWall and CrytoLocker are fake software and they do not belong to any cyber or real police. You should not trust these viruses and never pay any money.
Also CryptoWall and CryptoLocker infections may not always happen over the Internet or email. The infection could occur over shared files and/or drives or over shared removable media like USB thumb drives and external hard disks. Therefore, you should adhere to best practice security to protect internal system in your network from being infected.
To protect your computer from hackers you should talk to an IT professional, such as Microsolve. Our expert team at Microsolve can provide a virus protection service and help you implement safeguards to stop your computer being infected by malware*
If you are interested in the above information and would like to find out more about what’s needs to be done to protect your systems and data, don’t hesitate to contact us today.
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Malware - *malicious software" is any program or file that is harmful to a computer user. Thus, malware includes computer viruses, worms, Trojan horses, and also spyware, programming that gathers information about a computer user without permission.