Scammers try it through printers. Then the gullible buck

The Czech National Security Team CSIRT.CZ has been alerted to the proliferation of scams. According to him, fraudsters abuse the fact that modern printers actually can scan scanned documents directly into the mailbox.

"We are currently witnessing an increased incidence of compelling email faces as a scanned file sent by the printer," said Pavel Bašta, a security analyst at CSIRT.CZ, run by CZ.NIC.

Do not open the attachment at all

According to him, the danger lies in the attachment, which is part of the unsolicited e-mail. "Attached is an archive with the .rar extension. The .vbs script is wrapped in the archive, which can then do the damage.

"According to some researchers, it is most likely a new variant of Locky's ransomware, which encrypts the victims' files and adds a .lukitus suffix. Our captured sample is currently successfully detected with only some antivirals, "warned the security expert.

In other words, new malicious code that spreads through attachments in e-mail may not detect antivirus programs at all. Users do not even need to know that they have shut down their computer after opening an attachment.

He wants a ransom

Locky can make a nice mischief in his computer. When you run an attachment in an unsolicited e-mail, a scam virus is recorded on your PC, which is further damaging. It encrypts data and requests a ransom for their access.

The attackers are primarily money. However, once the ransom is paid, users are not sure they will get their data. Instead, you need to uninstall the virus from your computer. Making available unencrypted data is, in most cases, impossible.

How to defend yourself against blackmail viruses?

Do not open e-mail attachments from unknown and suspicious recipients.

Regularly back up your data. In the event of an infection, the computer simply reinstalles and the encrypted data can be restored without paying ransom or having to decrypt it.

External drives or other storage systems on which the data is backed up should not be permanently connected to the computer. This minimizes the risk that the extinction virus will settle in backed up data.

Regularly update your operating system as well as other programs. This makes it harder for computer pirates to exploit the discovered cracks to smuggle malicious code.

It is also necessary to regularly update the antivirus program or other security applications.

Do not use programs for which the manufacturer has already stopped supporting. The threat of infection, for example, in Windows XP is many times higher than in recent versions of this operating system.