The most vicious virus ever?

There’s a new form of malware known as ‘ransom-ware’ making the rounds and it’s one of the most vicious that we’ve ever seen.

Most infections cause problems for your computer or hide in the background to try to grab personal information, but this one will actually lock you out of your own files by using military grade encryption.

It’s called the CryptoLocker and if you get hit by it, your pictures, music, documents, tax records and everything you care about will become inaccessible unless you pay a ransom.

This nasty virus will even attack your backup drives or a business server, which means that one slip up by a single employee can cause an entire company to be locked out of their data files.

The primary methods of infection are from opening booby trapped e-mail attachments and websites that convince you that you need to update your video player.

Paying the ransom doesn’t guarantee that you will get your files back either, so consider this a wakeup call to re-evaluate how you are backing up.

We’ve got full details on what this attack does and how you can minimize your risk of becoming a victim, including what every business should be doing to fend off this malicious threat.

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