Since Coronavirus has spread most people are hording:

• Toilet paper
• Soap
• Cleaning products
• Hand Sanitizer
• Masks
• Food

Since Coronavirus has spread many nations & companies are:

• shutting down stores
• closing schools
• closing jobs or pushing working from home
• canceling sporting events
• canceling concerts, festivals, parades, etc
• offering free remote tools to work from home

Essentially the entire world is “shutdown” until further notice.

I urge everybody to take precautions but remain calm during this Coronavirus pandemic since freaking out will only cause added stress and chaos in an already crazy world.

Follow the steps at the CDC Website to take steps to protect yourself.

While the Coronavirus pandemic may be a very serious threat to the well being of people, I believe it’s also a great way for the government to control people in each nation & confine us all to our homes or take away other freedoms.

The Earn It Act

For example while the Coronavirus pandemic is going on congress is trying to pass “The EARN IT Act” which will do away with encryption and give the government the backdoor they have long wanted into your data. Read about it here.

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Palo Alto Networks threat intelligence analyst Brad Duncan reported that “Spora”, a powerful new ransomware strain that is able to encrypt files without communicating to a command-and-control server, is using a social engineering attack vector using fake “Chrome Font Pack” pop-ups.

Most ransomware spreads either through spam and email attachments or “malvertising”—fake ads that contain malware or malware links. Spora exploits unpatched vulnerabilities in both browsers and operating systems.

Spora’s evil geniuses have compromised multiple websites and turned the website pages into an unreadable font.  They tell visitors that the “HoeflerText” font is missing from the user’s browser and that they can fix this by downloading the “Chrome Font Pack.”

People then download and install the malicious code by double-clicking the “update.exe” file which kicks off the malicious code. The bad guys even provide help by showing where the victims can find the install file.

The moral of the story is this:  Be vigilant, be aware, and be prepared.   Keep your computer’s browsers updated to the latest versions, and make sure your operating systems are updated with the latest security patches.

And as always, “Think Before You Click”!

Well that didn’t last long because CryptoWall (aka Cryptolocker) is back and more destructive than ever and has already held ransom over 600k computers according to this article.

The new ransom amount is a staggering $500 USD and doubles if not paid before the date given after your files are encrypted. To make matters worse they only accept Bitcoin as payment which in my opinion makes it near impossible for the average computer user to pay up to recover their files.

Now, I’m not going to get into too many more details about the Trojan that does all this damage but I will refer you to a couple links that contain more information about it at the bottom of this article.

But first I want to explain the best ways to protect yourself so you can easily recover from disaster if you are hit by CryptoWall.

Have latest anti-virus definitions and Malware Protection

Make sure you have anti-virus that is current and up to date. Also having the Pro version of Malwarebytes installed and updated will help a lot as well.

Make sure you have bulletproof backups.

When I say bulletproof I mean the following:

• Cold Backups – These are backups that have been done and then taken offline.
• Off Computer Backups – Backups that have been copied to another machine or server such as a NAS device.
• Offsite Cold Backups – These are backups that are taken offsite and are offline.
• Offsite Backup – These are backups that are offsite.

I actually do the first three types of backups that I have listed above because I really do not want to lose my data.

Use your brain

This means do not click on ads & watch what you do click on or install on your computer. Knowing exactly what your doing online will greatly help you avoid installing Malware or getting hit by Cryptowall.

Lastly I want to wish my readers good luck and I hope you never get hit by this nasty trojan.

More Details about CryptoWall at the following link:

• Cryptowall – What it is and how to protect your systems