How ransomware victims can recover encrypted data for free

Free decryption tools provided by Bitdefender are now available online for all Internet users, offering ransomware victims the possibility to decrypt their files without having to pay criminals to do so.

The decryption tools developed by Bitdefender have been added to nomoreransom.org, an online portal available in English, Dutch, French, Italian, Portuguese and Russian.

“With estimates of ransomware induced financial losses nearing the billion dollar mark by the end of 2016, traditional security mechanism and technologies have fallen short of a complete defense against this type of threat,” says Bitdefender”s Chief Security Strategist, Catalin Cosoi.

A Bitdefender study shows that half of individual victims are willing to pay up to $500 to recover encrypted data.

Here are a few steps that could help users stay safe from ransomware:

• Use a known, award-winning security suite
• Patch or update your software to avoid known vulnerabilities from being exploited and used to infect your system
• Back up your data
• Enable the “Show hidden file extension” option. This will help identify suspicious files that have been named “.ZIP.EXE” and prevent their execution