Users increasingly depend on the Internet to carry out our tasks. Tools such as email and the cloud have become essential in such a digital world. Paper for ecological reasons for certain tasks is used less and less. This means that the correspondence and invoices that we had on paper are stored in the cloud or on the hard drives of our computers. Cybercriminals know how important these files are to us and try to profit from them. In this aspect, they carry out various types of attacks to get hold of our files or so that we cannot use them. In this article we are going to talk about the main methods to get infected with ransomware and also what to do so that you do not fall victim to it.
The ransomware we can define it as a type of harmful program that will prevent access to certain parts or files of the infected operating system and will ask us to pay a ransom in order to recover the files. Currently the trend is for the ransom payment to be made with cryptocurrencies because it makes it difficult to track. Normally it is not a good idea to pay it, here are the reasons not to pay a ransomware ransom.
Methods to get infected with ransomware
Cybercriminals are carrying out more and more sophisticated attacks. A very important issue to consider is that they affect both individuals and companies of all sizes. SMEs are often an interesting target because they do not usually have a high cybersecurity budget and are often unprepared. Now let’s take a look at some of the most common ways to get infected with ransomware:
- Via trojans on malicious or legitimate websites that have been compromised by cybercriminals. The moment users select any of the ads, they are redirected to another compromised page that infects them with ransomware or other malware.
- Through attacks using Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) in which some security breach of the system is exploited or with brute force attacks.
- using malicious spam what contains attachments trap in Word or PDF format or also a URL to a harmful web page.
- Wearing malvertising It consists of the use of online advertising to infect you with ransomware. When the victim clicks on an ad, the exploit kit scans the system for information about the software, operating system, browser, and more. If the kit discovers a security hole, it tries to install the ransomware.
- Via automatic downloads. It is done with what is known as a drive-by download that treats any download that occurs without our knowledge. Cybercriminals make use of drive-by downloads by hosting the harmful content on their own page or injecting it into legitimate websites by exploiting security holes.
- By means of the network propagation, now the most modern and sophisticated variants have automatic propagation mechanisms that allow them to infect other computers on the network. This can cause the cessation of activity of an entire company.
- The installation of pirated softwarewhich in addition to being cracked, can also hide ransomware.
- With infected USB drives and laptops. USB sticks can infect a computer and computers on an entire network. This can be deliberate or unintentional.
Tips to avoid being a victim of ransomware
The first thing we have to do is have our operating system with the latest updates installed. To this we have to add that we must have a good antivirus and, if possible, antimalware software. It is also important to have the computer’s firewall activated and to have the rest of the software updated, such as the browser.
On the other hand, if we want to avoid being victims of a ransomware attack, we must act with common sense and develop good practices such as:
- Do not open suspicious emails or from unknown senders.
- Never click on links or open attachments unless we are convinced that the sender is a trustworthy person.
- Make regular backups of our most important files.
- In companies, a very convenient practice is network segmentation.
- Do not connect unknown USB sticks to our computer.
- Configure the Remote Desktop connection so that it can only be accessed from a VPN and using two-factor authentication.
Finally, as you have seen, you have to be very alert if you do not want to get infected with ransomware.
