Is your account protected against ransomware?

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What if you will be the target of a ransomware attack and your computer will be encrypted? Will you be able to regain control of your accounts and access your online accounts?

What is ransomware?

Ransomware is a form of malware which encrypts complete harddrives when it gets activated.
Usually the victims are tricked into clicking on a malicious link or download.
When the ransomware has encrypted the disk usually a screen is shown to the victim where they can read how to unencrypt their device. In most cases the cybercriminals ask for a bitcoin payment. Only in a few cases your device will actually be unencrypted when you pay the ransom.

What do you have to lose?

It depends… It depends on what was stored on the device and how well you have organized your backups. It’s a good idea to think about this for a moment...

Where have you stored your keys to access your Hive account for instance?
If you only stored them on your device they are inaccessible when this device gets encrypted by ransomware.
Yesterday @onealfa created a blog about configuring a recovery account which was very useful and an eye opener to many (including me).
https://leofinance.io/hive-167922/@onealfa/how-much-do-you-care-about-your-crypto#@friendlymoose/re-phython-6unrq6
But you do have to be able to access the recovery account as well. If you store the keys to that account on the same device you're still not able to access your accounts.
And what about crypto wallets? Are you able to restore your wallet on another device?

What can you do?

If you really are dependent on your device, be sure you make backups of the data. If you store any passwords or keys on your device, place them in an encrypted password vault like KeepassXC.
Make sure you have an extra backup of this password vault on an external disk or USB drive which you should encrypt as well. It’s best to store these not in your own home in case of a fire.
This can be quite a hassle since you have to keep your backups up to date.
Another option is to store your passwords in an online password manager like Lastpass or 1Password. You only have to feel confident about your keys and passwords to be in a cloud solution.

What I do

Personally I’m using a cloud based solution at the moment. It gives me a safe feeling I can access my passwords and keys even if I get locked out of my computers at home. I’ve configured quite a long password to access the online vault which I also regularly change and have multi factor authentication turned on (which I do for every site that offers that).
Yes there is a chance that the cloud password manager is going to be hacked. But most of them have encrypted their customer data very well.
For now I’m feeling confident enough to keep my keys and passwords there, but maybe when the amount of money grows I will change the way I save my keys and passwords.

Does anyone else have some thoughts about this subject?

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta



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Bang, I did it again... I just rehived your post!
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