Ransomware is one of the most profitable malware for those who engage in digital fraud. In fact, last March was already about to become a millionaire problem. For those who do not know what it is, we can remember the case of the so-called “Police virus”, which showed a message on the screen as we had to pay a “fine” (rather a rescue) to recover our files and our computer for Illegal activities in it.
This ransomware did not have the sophistication of others like Petya, who was installed in the boot sector of the hard disk and encrypted it. However, many infected fell into the trap and paid the ransom. With a tool like RansomFree, which blocks attempts to execute malware, this might not have happened.
This is how RansomFree works
As we have been able to prove ourselves and as witnessed in Bleeping Computer, in our system hard drive are created two directories starting with special ASCII characters, as they will be the first to scan ransomware for weaknesses.
In these directories we can find files with extensions docx, xslx, sql or jpg with names that usually place them first in the lists. These files are the ones that the program will scan in the background without the consumption of resources is hardly affected, waiting for a change in them because it means that the ransomware will be fixed in them first before in any other.
These types of files are usually a usual goal of ransomware, because they are often referred to work documents or personal. These files act as honeypots, traps for the malware to try to infect the system, can be identified quickly and can be blocked.
As published, the program has been able to successfully stop infections by Locky, Cerber and Globe, while from Cybereason, the company that develops RansomFree, you can stop over forty different types of ransomware.
In any case, and depending on the type of detection that RansomFree performs, depends to a large extent on how the ransomware is to be able to function effectively. However, it is always important to have an extra line of defense for this type of situation. You can download the program from its official website.