For those who have not heard the term ransomware, this is a form of malware that will encrypt your data and not in a good way. Basically it encrypts your data without your knowledge/permission, with the hacker holding the keys to your information. You will then need to pay a ransom to get it unlocked, or the encryption key will not be turned over to you, or in some cases even throw away.
In fact just earlier this year a hospital in LA was hit by ransomware in which they were forced to fork out $17,000 just to gain access back to some of their data. That being said, security experts have recently announced that they have managed to successfully crack the ransomware called Petya that was discovered a couple of weeks ago.
Petya is a ransomware unlike others because it targeted the victim’s startup drive by rendering its master boot record inoperable, meaning that when users tried to start their computers, they would be greeted by a ransom note. However a recent tweet by @leostone has revealed that there is now a tool that will crack it.
Getting rid of the ransomware is a bit troublesome as it involves physically removing your startup drive from your computer and plugging it to another PC. Hopefully none of our readers have been affected by the Petya malware, but if you have, the instructions and files on how to crack it can be found here.