Slow Afternoon

It was a normal Wednesday afternoon when Jim noticed his computer was running sluggish. He called the IT guy and they asked him to reboot his PC, which seemingly resolved the issue.

The IT Guy

The next day Jim noticed the same speed issues. This time, when he called the IT Guy he walked over to the PC and noticed that some strange software was hammering the CPU and Memory.  He shut down the tasks and suggested to the CEO that they ought to invest in some Anti-Virus software.

Budget Constraint

The CEO replied “this is not in the budget, let’s talk again in 3 months”. The IT guy was a bit bemused but didn’t think much of it, he was employed to keep things running not necessary improve.

The Calm before the storm

After a long weekend Jim came back to his desk switched on his PC and when he tried to open the accounts software he couldn’t. it had come up with an error. He tried to open his usual Excel sheet and also couldn’t. Then he tried to open the Legal PDF contract that had been sent over and also couldn’t. Something was wrong. He noticed that the files had changed to a .locky extension, so he called the IT Guy.

Mr Clever Guy

The IT guy in his wisdom tried to rename the files but they couldn’t open them. So he decided to go try to recover from backups. On checking his backups, he noticed that since the last festive period the backup hadn’t been done. He was sweating and nervous.

When Reality sinks in

After further attempts to open more files a message popped up saying the files had been encrypted and to get them back Jim had to follow instructions to send money.

Jim and his company had been hit by Ransomware (Reveton, CryptoLocker, CryptoLocker.F, TorrentLocker, Cryptowall…)

Widespread Panic after Ransomware attack

The IT guy and Jim went to see the CEO but didn’t make it past the secretary who too couldn’t open any of her files. Soon it became apparent that the entire company was having problems opening documents they needed. Pictures, Contracts, Spreadsheets, Letters and Sales Forecasts and Accounts data.

… Part 2 coming soon