Just saw my friend get hit with a ransomware attack in 20 minutes flat

He clicked one sketchy link in an email and within 20 minutes his entire business files were locked. Has anyone else had to deal with getting data back after something like this without paying the ransom?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_william3d ago

Used to say backups were overkill, but not anymore after seeing that.

jamesroberts3d ago

yo honestly i gotta say i think people blow this ransomware stuff way out of proportion sometimes. i mean yeah it sucks but 20 minutes? sounds like either your friend was super careless or this is one of those stories where the details get stretched every time its told. i've clicked plenty of dumb links in my life and never had anything lock up that fast. plus most decent backup services will auto-sync to the cloud every hour or so, so even if you do get hit you're only losing a little bit of work. people act like one wrong click means your whole life is over but usually you can just restore from a backup or wipe the drive and start fresh. the whole "scared straight" narrative around ransomware feels more like marketing for antivirus software than real life to me.

grantw323d ago

Ngl that's rough, I feel for your friend. Honestly ransomware is terrifying because it's not just a few files, it's everything at once. The only way I've seen people get their data back without paying is if they had an offline backup or a cloud backup that wasn't connected at the time. If your friend doesn't have that, they're in a really tough spot, I've heard of people losing months of work this way.