Your pictures - are they safe?

I realize this is probably the wrong section of the p.o.t.n forums to post this but this is where I spend 99.9% of my time so here goes.

Today, a co-worker revealed that his wife when to look at some pictures on their computer today only to find she couldn't. All the pictures on the machine were encrypted. He had contracted a type of virus called ransomware. If he wants access to his pictures again he will have to pay for the private encryption key. Nasty surprise for him and a wake up call. He doesn't do proper back-ups. This type of virus can access/encrypt your back-ups on any drives it has access to (ie: nas). He asked what I did. I told him my pictures were spread across multiple computers, on external drives that were normally disconnected/off and burned to DVDs. No way for anyone to destroy all copies.

This type of malware might be old news for a lot of people here but it was new news to me. If you don't know about it then do a quick search. Apparently there has been an increase in these type of infections since windows 10 was released. Thanks Microsoft.

Add to this the life expectancy of home burned disks (cd or DVDs) and hard drive failures and your digital pictures are an dangered species.

Just an FYI. Hope it saves someone some grief.

Rod

Security and information exchange mutually exclusive goals in the first place. If you must have one, you can't have the other.

The internet was designed for the express purpose of freely sharing information. Windows was designed for the express purpose of running one unconnected computer. As long as we are stuck using 50+ year old hardware, it will be ever thus.

Amazon Glacier is very cheap if all you use it for is emergency backups.

I personally have a NAS that I back up my laptop to, and periodically I have the NAS back itself off to a separate USB drive. That goes to my office. This means I have 3 copies of files, with 1 being offsite.

To combat ransomware, you should have a NAS that you periodically mount to your computers for periodic backups, then make sure they are unmounted. Only mount for the backups....

I have all my pictures backed up to google photos. Granted, they are no longer in RAW, but the important ones, i.e. photos of my daughter are safe. At the end of the day as long as I don't lose those, i'll be ok. I'd still be pissed, don't get me wrong, but I won't be heart broken

That's one reason I keep an offsite backup. External hard drive at the office, I bring it home every couple months and back up EVERYTHING. Granted I would lose a few weeks of info if ransomware ever bit my butt, but the great majority of my files are safe.

There are better solutions to keep ALL your files safe from such attacks. This is just my cheap and simple solution.

RodS57 wrote in post #17922732
I realize this is probably the wrong section of the p.o.t.n forums to post this but this is where I spend 99.9% of my time so here goes.

Today, a co-worker revealed that his wife when to look at some pictures on their computer today only to find she couldn't. All the pictures on the machine were encrypted. He had contracted a type of virus called ransomware. If he wants access to his pictures again he will have to pay for the private encryption key. Nasty surprise for him and a wake up call. He doesn't do proper back-ups. This type of virus can access/encrypt your back-ups on any drives it has access to (ie: nas). He asked what I did. I told him my pictures were spread across multiple computers, on external drives that were normally disconnected/off and burned to DVDs. No way for anyone to destroy all copies.

This type of malware might be old news for a lot of people here but it was new news to me. If you don't know about it then do a quick search. Apparently there has been an increase in these type of infections since windows 10 was released. Thanks Microsoft.

Add to this the life expectancy of home burned disks (cd or DVDs) and hard drive failures and your digital pictures are an dangered species.

Just an FYI. Hope it saves someone some grief.

Rod

The user is almost always the weak link. Someone on the computer with read-write access to the pictures stupidly opened an email attachment, clicked a malware ad, etc. That's FAIL #1. More importantly, there was no backup. That's the bigger fail. Had he had a good backup, FAIL #1 would have been an inconvenience rather than an expensive lesson or major disaster.

I store my data on a Synology NAS. It is not accessible from the Internet. My personal and work files and my raw files are only accessible from my PC. My edited pictures and videos are stored in folders on the NAS that are read-only to everyone but me. Everything important is backed up to a pair of hard drives I rotate between the NAS and a fire-resistant box periodically. it is also backed up to Crashplan which keeps a very deep version history.

So should someone in my house do something stupid and install randomware on their PC, the vast majority of data on the NAS wouldn't be affected. The data that would be affected could be easily restored to a pre-infection state.

I'd like to know why you think Windows 10 has anything to do with this. Ransomware has been around for years. Its increasing because its profitable.

What a number of respondents said about security is true. Summed up briefly

10% of the PC Security protection is TECHNICAL
90% of the PC Security protection is tied to the person at the keyboard.

The physical lock on your front door is the 10%. You remembering to lock the lock,
make sure the door is closed, ensure a guest does not prop the door open, keeping
control of the keys, etc. is the 90%. Both components are required for effective PC security

Hope this helps,

110yd

mike_d wrote in post #17924134
I'd like to know why you think Windows 10 has anything to do with this. Ransomware has been around for years. Its increasing because its profitable.

I have no personal experience in this regard. At least one of the articles I read said their was an increase in infections since the release of Windows 10.

My personal opinion (based on personal experience ) and a view which is widely shared is that MS has a very poor track record when it comes to system security. I see no reason why win 10 will deviate from this 35 year old pattern.

Rod

110yd wrote in post #17924351
What a number of respondents said about security is true. Summed up briefly

10% of the PC Security protection is TECHNICAL
90% of the PC Security protection is tied to the person at the keyboard.

The physical lock on your front door is the 10%. You remembering to lock the lock,
make sure the door is closed, ensure a guest does not prop the door open, keeping
control of the keys, etc. is the 90%. Both components are required for effective PC security

Hope this helps,

110yd

Agree 100%

It is well recognized that over 90% of all computer problems originate between the keyboard and the back of the chair.

Rod

RodS57 wrote in post #17924394
I have no personal experience in this regard. At least one of the articles I read said their was an increase in infections since the release of Windows 10.

My personal opinion (based on personal experience ) and a view which is widely shared is that MS has a very poor track record when it comes to system security. I see no reason why win 10 will deviate from this 35 year old pattern.

Rod

Ransomware is just software. Software which the user runs in their PC. Windows cannot protect itself from the user unless it becomes a cripped nannyware OS like iOS. I hope that day never comes. I think your ideas about Microsoft's security are about 10 years out of date.

I use a dedicated computer for my photography that has no internet connection...not much chance of anything nasty getting on it...
For email and Internet browsing I just use my tablet..

mike_d wrote in post #17924467
Ransomware is just software. Software which the user runs in their PC. Windows cannot protect itself from the user unless it becomes a cripped nannyware OS like iOS. I hope that day never comes. I think your ideas about Microsoft's security are about 10 years out of date.

And I think you are wrong but what do I know. I stopped using Windows 15 years ago. Guess we will just have to agree to disagree. As for iOS I think it is much better software than Windows. It has a much better foundation. That being said, I don't like apple either. Not because of the software but because of the way the company is run. Using an iPad to write this. Go figure.

Anyway, my original post was as I said, an FYI to shine a light on something that maybe not everyone knows about but can have a real impact. After all this is a photography forum and some I know just lost all of their pictures. Seemed pertinent at the time.

Rod

don1163 wrote in post #17924478
I use a dedicated computer for my photography that has no internet connection...not much chance of anything nasty getting on it...
For email and Internet browsing I just use my tablet..

No matter what operating system you use that is the only way to be really secure.

Rod

This is a forum that is open to all, so given the original subject of Photos being essentially held for ransom, here is my two cents. If you ever took the time to look at a browser and the number of
active java scripts, extensions, plugins that are running on a web page, it might cause some re-calibration in your browsing habits. Internet Explorer or what ever incarnation of browser that Microsoft is offering needs help in my opinion. Java, Flash, Scripts and the assortment of plugins need to have some sort of containment.

Allowing Scripts/Java/Flash/Plu​gins/Extensions to run indiscriminately on any web page is asking for trouble... Hence we have people who exploit the use of the above, and now you have a case of ransom. I have seen more than my share of this level of dysfunction. Firefox, and NoScript works, and there are probably other solutions.

I assume this is only for windows?