Cryptowall: Remove and delete encrypted files

These are the steps I’m going to be taking to remove the Cryptowall Virus and restoring my files to their previous state.

At present, I have the following means at my disposal.

  • System restore – Including restore shadow volumes
  • Online backups – Onedrive/Google drive
  • Offline backups – Solid state drive backups

Using a combination of these, I intend to restore my files to their previous state.

Step 1: Remove Virus:

To get things rolling again, and make my computer safe to use. I’ve to rid myself of the Virus.

Boot-time scan for viruses

Boot-time Scan

Most anti-virus software worth their salt have this option.

Has to be a boot-time scan to unsure your operating system and the connected files are not affected.

For my computer, which has 220GB used on the hard drive, it took around 3 hours.

Malware Bytes Scan

Malware bytes seeks those pieces of not-yet-virus material.

If you want to prevent your computer from getting the infection again, you need to run this.

JRT Scan

Junkware Removal Tool, or JRT.

Similar to Malware bytes, it simply insures that files associated with dubious activities won’t infect your machine in the future.

You may get some false positives with this, so not everyone likes to use it…

These steps are essential to ensure you have a clean system. Continue reading “Cryptowall: Remove and delete encrypted files”

Cryptowall takes over my computer

So….. Turns out the NHS, Fedex and a number of other companies and organisations have been hit by this same Ransomwear virus.

According to Avast, (who I use), there have been infections in 99 countries in the last 2 days.

Apparently, the NHS are still using windows XP on their computers. A 12 year old operating system.

Windows stopped patching XP on April 8, 2014.

That means it’s a sitting duck for systems using XP.

On my cloudflare account, most attacks come from XP computers, simply because they are so easy to commandeer and bend to the wills of evil hackers.

How to fight ransomwear?

If you, like I, did a search on this, “how to fight ransomwear, get rid of it from your computer”, it turns up a number of companies claiming to be able to ‘fix’ your system for exorbitant amounts of money.

I’ve done my own guide to removing ransomwear from your computer.

It works pretty well.

It worked when I got randsomwear, and you can find it here. My guide to removing ransomwear from your computer.

Below.

Article.

Cryptowall, ever heard of it? I hadn’t until tonight…

…. Watching Lost this evening… I went to open up VLC player, and I noticed that it was taking a long time to start-up.

Opening Process Explorer, I saw the SVChost, (a common windows task), in explorer.exe taking up around 4% of CPU.

Thought nothing of it. I know SVChost runs in the background carrying out important tasks for the operating system.

Watched Lost, (Series 4 Episode 8, ‘The shape of things to come’), as I finished, this PNG was displaying on Windows picture preview.Crytowall Ransomwear

I’d not opened this file. It was telling me Cryptowall, whilst I was watching lost, had encrypted all the files on my computer using RSA-2048 encryption.

My Pictures Library now looks like this…. Continue reading “Cryptowall takes over my computer”

New Years Flooding 2016 in 34 pictures

First post of the New Year.

Christmas was very quite.

I fell asleep before midnight on New Years Eve.

Flooding

Pressure_cooker_boxartStory of the moment seems to be the flooding which widespread parts of the world are experiencing.

It’s put down to the weather phenomenon known as ‘el nino’, which translates to ‘little boy’ in English.

I’ve been around for ‘el nino’s’ before. This one seems particularly bad, maybe the worst.

But, having said that, we are turning the planet into a giant pressure cooker, so what do you expect?

Economics

When I was camping in France, it rained for 3 days solid.

I expected there to be floods everywhere. The river on the campsite barely rose 3 inches. Why is this?

Urban run-off chart
Taken from http://water.usgs.gov/edu/watercyclerunoff.html

It’s called ‘run-off’ and the fact that most of the planet is being turned into a giant urban district, in order to make more money, support more people, make the rich richer, and the poor poorer.

The hydrological cycle

I contest climate change and increasingly changeable weather conditions are caused by the unobstructed progress of rainwater, from river to ocean to cloud without ever seeing grass or soil or trees.

Trees slow the flow and break the rain for the vegetation below, which slows it’s flow even further with its foliage. Water dispersed in this way runs off very slowly, contributing to the natural water table.

Water not slowed in this way flows right back into the sea, as fast as it can.

Here are some pictures to back it up.

Taken from IBT

Meteorologists predict a wild, wet winter for much of the world, thanks to this year’s El Niño, which ties with the 1997-1998 season as the strongest recorded. The weather phenomenon happens every few years when the Pacific Ocean warms up around the equator, changing weather worldwide.

This year’s powerful El Niño has already caused severe floods in many South American countries. More than 100,000 people were forced to evacuate their homes in areas bordering Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil and Argentina after floods due to heavy summer rains.

El Niño flooding 2016
A church is partially submerged in floodwater in Alberdi, Paraguay, on 5 January 2016 (Jorge Adorno/Reuters)
El Niño flooding 2016
A cat sits inside a flooded building in Asuncion, Paraguay, on 28 December 2015 (Jorge Adorno/Reuters)
Continue reading “New Years Flooding 2016 in 34 pictures”

VOD: New Zealand – Cruelty, The dark side of dairy

New Zealand has one of the biggest dairy industries in the world.

Not just for fresh products, such as milk and cheese, but also processed foods such a baby powdered milk.

The industry does have a dark side.

Every  year, each cattle must calf. This keeps them lactating.

Once the calf is born, it begins on a journey, the video shows their journey.

New Zealands diary industry
Animal cruelty in New Zealand’s diary industry

Continue reading “VOD: New Zealand – Cruelty, The dark side of dairy”