Ransomware Warning, is your data safe?

Security Software
1 - Eset Protect Advanced (contact us for a quote)
      Proactive cloud-based defense against Zero-day and never-before-seen threats
2 - Eset Protect Complete (contact us for a quote)
      Advanced protection for Microsoft 365 apps with added proactive threat defense

Recovery from ransomware
1 - If you search the internet you will find that most suggest not dealing with hackers directly. From a client's experience
     hackers will try and milk more money from you. They rarely show good faith.
2 - We found ransomwarehelp.com that helped our client recover their data very well. (Let them know we sent you ;-)

 

Hacking Info
Searching on YouTube.com I found the following.

This Insane Virus Trick Would Have Fooled Me - Watch Out

**Using hidden (invisible) characters things like reading left to right (U+202E) which allows an executable to look like a Word document (they even add the Word icon)
Unicode U 202E - Right-to-Left overrides (RTLO) take advantage of a special Unicode character [U+202e], which flips characters. The legitimate use for this Unicode character is to support languages like Arabic and Hebrew, which are read from right to left instead of left to right. Hacker use this code to create a hidden executable (virus).

**What is a Right-to-Left Override attack?
Some malicious actors have picked up on the potential for mischief with this character, and use it to enhance their phishing campaigns. When we first saw this trick being used,
we wrote it off as a one-off campaign done by some malicious actor who has been reading some very old forum posts. During the last few months however, we’ve seen more and more examples of this being used in the wild.

Staying safe from this type of attack is not too tricky when keeping in mind some basic rules of internet safety.

Have you received messages from  a server or someone you don't or wasn't expecting? Think whether your company actually uses the service
in question. If the service is something you use, you should check the service directly to see if the notification is real rather than clicking the link or downloading an attachment.
Using known service notifications is an efficient way for the attacker to lure you to a fake website pretending to be the real one to get you to enter your user credentials.
Be very cautious with HTML attachments! When you open a malicious HTML, the attacker might be able to access everything
you do. For instance, read your keystrokes, meaning that you don't even have to submit the password for it to be readable for the attacker.
**When opening an attachment make sure the file icon matches the file type in the attachment name. Our operating systems are not fooled by this trick and will display the correct icon. In this case a blank page which is commonly used at the .html file type icon instead of a note often seen in audio file icons.

****Windows 10 red X in icons can also be caused by virus attack. So, you can download and install dedicated antivirus software on your computer to full scan and kill the detected viruses.

We hope the info helpful to fix your Windows 10 red X on icons issue.