I've been trying to raise awareness in my social medias, since my family, friends and co-workers might not spend time on HackerNews. If you want, copy my messa

I've been trying to raise awareness in my social medias, since my family, friends and co-workers might not spend time on HackerNews. If you want, copy my message and share with your family, friends and co-workers: "Hi folks, There's a new virus out there that I want to raise awareness of, it's called CryptoLocker. Basically what this virus does is that it tracks all your files - hard drives, flash drives, usb sticks, network drives/shares - then it encrypts the files it finds. The only way to unlock the files again is to pay $300 to get the key used for the encryption. The encryption used is RSA with a 2048 bit key which makes it extremely hard to crack, I'd say impossible with the time span and todays computers. You have 72 hours before they trash the key making it impossible for you to get your data back. This can be extremely devastating if you are running a business and all your files are gone. If you sync your files to the cloud, you're still not safe, it syncs the encrypted files as well. If you are able to restore to previous versions of your files in the cloud - great. Let your friends, family and co-workers know about this. Here are some simple ways to avoid getting a virus in general: 1. Don't open e-mails from people you don't know 2. Don't open attachments in e-mails unless you were waiting for the attachment 3. Don't go to websites/click links that you don't fully trust 4. Don't download and execute files that you don't fully trust It might seem obvious to the most of us to don't do the above, but to a lot of friends, family and co-workers it might not be. Imagine waking up and having to pay $300 to get your data back. However, the police tracked down one of the servers that serves the keys and shut them down which means the keys were not delivered and the data was lost, this means even if you do pay the $300, there is no guarantee that you will get the data back. Raise awareness of this and avoid having your files lost."