Post
Topic
Board Beginners & Help
Re: Ransomware and BTC
by
ricreis394
on 06/10/2016, 09:36:12 UTC
Hi. I’ve registered in your community in hope that you’ll help me. My problem is that my wife’s laptop is infected with Odin virus that has encrypted all files. And now it claims for 1.5 BTC for encryption. I tried different tools, antiviruses, guides etc. One thing that had helped me was ShadowExplorer (http://www.shadowexplorer.com/downloads.html) which I found in this site (http://myspybot.com/odin-virus/), and with a help of it I managed to decrypt little bit of files, but not very important. Sad
So finally I decided to pay 1.5 BTC for encryption, but I don’t know how, where and when I can buy this crypto currency. So I hope that you can give me some advice's or provide with a link to a step-by-step guide on how to use BTC. Huh Huh
And last question – why can’t I pay with my dollar card? What is a reason for them to use Bitcoins? I don’t get it. Undecided


I'll chime in with others.

1, don't even bother paying this "ransom" you are just tossing out good $
2, use that $ and buy yourself another computer and try to safeguard it better, not downloading things and sites you visit, anti-virus, different passwords, all sorts of things I don't have the time to list
3, learn to remove the virus yourself/with help from online, malewarebyets is a pretty good site that helps people, I haven't been there in years, but know it exists
4, your computer is already compromised and any files will just compromise a new system.........don't even bother accept the loss, documents and photos should of been printed anyways and not just stored on a pc  Undecided

Lastly, sorry this happened to you.  Most people are just assholes and we have to learn how to swim among them.

as a cheaper solution, you don't even have to replace the computer, just the hard drive, those can be pretty cheap.  you may even have another older computer sitting around that has a hard drive you can use.  but, with a new hard drive in place, do not get skippy and try adding the infected drive after the fact and get your files, within seconds of adding that hard drive you will likely be right back here at square one

correct me if i am wrong but can't you just format the hard drive instead? it is not physically damaged. the files re just encrypted which you can format and start fresh with an empty HDD.

and to OP, i have seen some progress in breaking the encryption of some types of ransomeware on reddit. maybe you should check it out.

If the OP wants to recover his files, formatting doesn't solve the problem.
Remember that certain computers have valuable files, and that files can cost more than 1.5 BTC, probably OP is in that situation.
I heard reports that some people pays and is successful, but I believe it's a risk anyway.