The news of the malicious software, GameOver Zeus, working with Cryptolocker within one cybercrime campaign has left many people in a panic over the seriousness of this global cyber-virus, which experts warn may cause large financial loss.
GameOver Zeus is stealing information and if it doesn’t get enough valuable data it might resort to Cryptolocker, which in turns looks to lock users’ computers and hold them at ransom.
David Emm, senior expert at Kaspersky’s Global Research and Analysis Teams, says: “These types of threats are not uncommon – in our virus lab we see about 315,000 unique samples every day, including banking Trojans, ransomware and many other types of malware.
“Looking at Zeus, as original Zeus code has been available over the Internet for years, it should be noted that there are literally hundreds of thousands of variants – one of the reasons for this is because if the attackers have taken control of a user’s computer they are going to want to keep control of it for as long as possible.”
It is important to have a reliable security solution installed on the computer with all the latest updates to it, to ensure privacy and data is protected against current and emerging cyber threats.
For example Kaspersky Lab security solutions for home and corporate users contain a range of awarded technologies to prevent different types of malware attacks including those designed to steal confidential and financial data, or encrypt important files in order to ransom money.
Along with protection of computers it is also advisable to ensure regular back up of sensitive and valuable information. If you have a backup, even if you just manually drag-and-drop your files onto a USB drive that you trust, then you can avoid the need to pay the ransom if you do get infected with Cryptolocker or other malware of this kind.
