Security Monk vs. Emperor Palpatine

This week, we continue our ongoing ransomware discussion with the Inside Out Security Show panel Kilian Englert, Mike Buckbee, and Mike Thompson.

But before we launched into our conversation, as an icebreaker, I asked the panel what their advice would be to this tired sysadmin who deleted the wrong directory on the wrong server?

Buckbee: Do exactly what they did to fix the problem.

Englert: It happens, just have to recover and move on.

Thompson: Always take a snapshot before touching your production server.

Here is what happens when you allow your employees to work long hours pic.twitter.com/QMgoaWpKYY

― wir wussten nichts? (@c089) February 1, 2017

Back to Ransomware

I likened this singular, life-changing malware to Emperor Palpatine . Why? The scammers try to be your friend and provide customer support. Meanwhile, they’re clever about extorting money from you.

There were a few interesting ransomware stories that we covered:

An IT pro that tried to fight back by sending the perpetrators a Locky ransomware. We’re not certain if it was a success, but at least he tried One hijacked a hotel from making new hotel keys Police storage devices that record video data were infected The scariest of them all, Google Play hosted a ransomware app that infected a user’s cell phone Moving away from ransomware, we also discussed these controversial stories: Android VPNs don’t really encrypt Backups of backups pressing delete doesn’t fully delete your data US can’t just seize data

Tool of the week:Google’s Site Reliability Engineering