Don’t Fall Victim to ZEPTO, the Latest Ransom-Ware Virus!

Have you been lucky enough to have avoided the recent onslaught of the ‘Locky’ ransom-ware virus?

Are you one of the many businesses that have had their files encrypted, encountering the expense of down-time and data retrieval?

Or worse again, fell victim to the virus with no reliable back-up system in place, learning the valuable, and possibly very expensive lesson.

Zepto is the latest ransom-ware virus to attack, with similar consequences in that your files end up scrambled and that a message will appear on your screen telling you how much you need to pay to unscramble the files, in essence another disruptive, expensive click on an unsafe email!Lock & Key

Zepto appears to be circulated in emails with an attached ZIP file or DOCM file, both commonly used methods by ransom-ware criminals.

Your data files are both scrambled and renamed, so that encrypted files end up with names that look like this:

  • FA3D5195-3FE9-1DBC-E35E-89380D21F515.zepto
  • FA3D5195-3FE9-1DBC-7E8D-D6F39B86044A.zepto
  • FA3D5195-3FE9-1DBC-1683-7BF4FD77911D.zepto
  • FA3D5195-3FE9-1DBC-30B9-E2FF891CDB11.zepto

The first half of each name is the same for every file, and is a unique identifier that tells the crooks who you are if you decide to pay up to get your data back.

After your files are scrambled, Zepto presents a “how to pay” message, to make very sure you know that you can recover your data for a fee.

The message appears in three different ways: as your desktop wallpaper; in an image that’s opened up in the Windows Photo Viewer; and as an HTML page that’s saved into every directory where files have been scrambled… Read more of this Naked Security article here