Sad Puppy or Misery Loves Company
I'm leaving you with this photo of a sad, little puppy I photographed back in 2013 on some side road in Utah. I had stopped for a pee break and there he was.
I may be gone for a bit. You see, my main system was hit with a ransomware virus on July 4th. The virus encrypted pretty much all of my photos and document files. The assholes who did this to me want almost $1,700 USD (2.5 bitcoins to be exact) for the decryption key, but there is no way in hell would I ever send these scumbags even a penny.
And before you ask, yes, I have (had) backups stored on a separate HDD, but in the same computer. I also had a third copy of my files sorted on a NAS. The virus got to them all.
I've spent many hours looking for a way to decrypt the files, but at this time, none exists. Hopefully one will be available soon, but it may still be months and months away.
Oh, the virus is called Zepto, so called because after it encrypts your files, it changes the extension to .zepto. Not sure how this got installed on my system. I run antivirus software and am pretty careful opening up email attachments, etc. (but, obviously, not careful enough.
Tomorrow I'll begin rebuilding this system with a fresh OS install and new HDDs. I'll store the old ones until, hopefully, a fix is released.
I'll still be on Flickr, looking and commenting on your photos and checking on the groups I run, but I may not be posting new photos for a while.
Sad Puppy or Misery Loves Company
I'm leaving you with this photo of a sad, little puppy I photographed back in 2013 on some side road in Utah. I had stopped for a pee break and there he was.
I may be gone for a bit. You see, my main system was hit with a ransomware virus on July 4th. The virus encrypted pretty much all of my photos and document files. The assholes who did this to me want almost $1,700 USD (2.5 bitcoins to be exact) for the decryption key, but there is no way in hell would I ever send these scumbags even a penny.
And before you ask, yes, I have (had) backups stored on a separate HDD, but in the same computer. I also had a third copy of my files sorted on a NAS. The virus got to them all.
I've spent many hours looking for a way to decrypt the files, but at this time, none exists. Hopefully one will be available soon, but it may still be months and months away.
Oh, the virus is called Zepto, so called because after it encrypts your files, it changes the extension to .zepto. Not sure how this got installed on my system. I run antivirus software and am pretty careful opening up email attachments, etc. (but, obviously, not careful enough.
Tomorrow I'll begin rebuilding this system with a fresh OS install and new HDDs. I'll store the old ones until, hopefully, a fix is released.
I'll still be on Flickr, looking and commenting on your photos and checking on the groups I run, but I may not be posting new photos for a while.