Backups [was Re: Is tape dead?]

[Liam Proven]

On 18 September 2015 at 16:55, Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote:
> CryptoLocker has been around for a year.  I don't think that McAfee nor AVG
> see it.  "Well, it's not a VIRUS, . . ."


Former AVG employee here. I quit; this is not an official statement.

CryptoLocker/CryptoWall/etc are *not* a single program. It's a whole
family of them. The programs are constantly modified so that the
anti-malware doesn't pick them up until it's too late. Antimalware
mostly still uses signature databases for identification, plus hooks
for suspicious activity. Cryptolocker is not infectious, so it doesn't
perform canonical suspicious activities. It opens lots of user data
files but so do indexing tools from Windows Search to Google Desktop
to Copernic.

However, Cryptolocker et al spread by fooling users into running
something they shouldn't run. I'm sorry, but you got suckered.

Me, I only use Windows if someone pays me to. Life is too short
otherwise. My desktop is a Mac (and before that was a Hackintosh); my
laptops run Ubuntu. Both are much *much* less work and I don't need to
run antimalware.

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