A new wave of Cryptolocker has just showed up!

As the latest announcement of PC security experts claims, people should expect a new wave of Cryptolocker. At the moment of writing, you are at the biggest risk of getting infected with this threat (or other its variants) if you live in Australia and Europe. However, even if you live in USA or Far East countries, you should still be very careful when opening email attachments or when clicking on commercial pop-up ads because there is a huge possibility that, seeking to increase their income, hackers will start spreading this ransomware in each of world’s regions.

It is known that the most of security vendors have already updated their tools so they could recognize new versions of Cryptolocker ransomware before their infiltration. Nevertheless, you should still avoid email messages asking you to download “important” attachments to your computer. In addition, you should stay away from pop-up ads that show up during people’s browsing. If an alert informs you about missing updates and offers you to download them for free, you should stay away from it. It’s always safer to visit the official website of the program to see what is missing on your computer.

What are the latest versions of Cryptolocker you should know about?

The first one is called Los Pollos Hermanos virus. No matter how surprisingly the name of this threat sounds, it seems that it is a very sophisticated version of Cryptolocker virus that is targeting Australians at the moment. After infecting the system and encrypting each of predetermined files, this threat requires to pay a ransom of $450, which is much bigger than the amount of money that was asked by the first versions of Cryptolocker. Besides, it seems that this is not the end. If the victim fails to pay this ransom, Los Pollos Hermanos promises to rise this payment to $1000. As you can see, it is a very nasty piece of malware with a very silly name.

Another threat that is closely related to Cryptolocker is called BitCryptor. It was detected just few days ago and, according to the latest reports, has already managed to infiltrate several hundreds of computers. This ransomware is different from the ones that have been tested previously because it is capable of blocking predetermined processes in task manager. Of course, one part of processes that this virus is designed to block belongs to security programs, such as mbam, spyhunter, roguekiller, etc. This can easily initiate problems when trying to remove this ransomware from the system. At the moment of writing, BitCryptor is asking to pay a ransom of 216 euros, so it is obvious that the main region where it is spread in Europe. However, as we have already warned you, each of Cryptolocker variants can be altered according to hackers’ needs..

Please, make sure you have a good backup regime on your computer to avoid unexpected loss of your important files! If you still don’t have extra copies of your photos, music files, art or other important files, you should check this post to know how could you backup them: Why do I need backup and what options do I have for that? If your files have already been encrypted, you should give a try for these tools: R-Studio, Photorec or Kaspesky Ransomware Decryptor.

Finally, don’t forget to install a powerful security software to prevent infiltration of malware, including Cryptolocker virus. In this particular case, we recommend using two different programs: SpyHunter and Webroot SecureAnywhere AntiVirus.

About the author
Jake Doevan
Jake Doevan - Computer technology expert

Jake Doevan is one of News Editors for 2-spyware.com. He graduated from the Washington and Jefferson College , Communication and Journalism studies.

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