GOZeus, Cryptolocker two-week window: here’s what you can do to defend yourself

The National Crime Agency (NCA) UK issued a warning asking Brits to prepare themselves for a cyber attack storm in two weeks’ time after an international joint operation involving FBI and other authorities disrupted what is believed to be the largest GOZeus malware botnet.

The reason NCA issued the warning was that only the Botnet has been disrupted thereby breaking the communication channels of the alleged perpetrators including Evgeniy Bogachev – one of the master minds behind GOZeus.

None of perpetrators have been arrested and it is believed that the attackers will want to establish their communication links as well as infect new systems to recreate their disrupted botnet.

With the existing communication infrastructure of the culprits decommissioned, there is a window of opportunity for affected users to clean their systems and others to ensure that they don’t get infected in the next round of attacks.

Security companies have been closely working with ISPs to single down affected users and if you are using a GOZeus infected system, you will receive an email from your ISP stating that your system is infected and you need to take appropriate actions to eliminate the Trojan.

So the primary question is how to prepare for the supposed cyber-attack storm? Here we have a list of few things that you can check and do to ensure utmost due diligence as far as security of your systems is concerned:

Is your system running Windows?

If you are running a Windows operating system on your system, you need to take utmost care as GOZeus and Cryptolocker will affect Windows systems only. Linux and Mac OS X users are safe. Windows users read on!

Check if you are affected

So we assume that you are running a Windows variant if you are reading this. Head on to GetSafeOnline.org – a government backed initiative – and download the recommended tools to check if your system is affected by GOZeus or Cryptolocker or both.

We would like you to give you a heads up that the site may behave erratically considering that everyone in the UK is hammering the site with download requests.

Install and / or update anti-virus solution

If you haven’t yet installed an anti-virus solution, now is the time to get one (either free of licensed), install it, update it and sweep your system for any infections. Almost all major anti-virus vendors have managed to detect almost all variants of GOZeus and Cryptolocker and hence you have a fair chance of avoiding an infection.

Change passwords

If you haven’t changed the password of your system and online banking accounts, you should probably do it. But ensure that you have scanned your Windows system for potential malware. You don’t want a key-logger sitting on your computer recording your every key stroke.

Apply Windows updates

If you haven’t been too vigilant about the Windows update cycle and the notifications asking you to update your system, now is the time to heed to those things and apply every update to your system that is remaining. Applying Windows security updates will patch recently discovered vulnerabilities there reducing the attack surface for hackers.

Backup

One of the most important thing that you can do to ensure that you don’t end up losing your precious data is to backup everything that is important to you. Make sure that you have a second copy of all your photos, videos, documents, and other personal stuff on a removable drive or on the cloud stashed away from your primary laptop or desktop.

Friendly looking yet deceptive emails

There could be cases wherein you receive emails that may employ social engineering tactics and lure you to open an attachment or click on link. The best thing to do to an email that appears to be from unfamiliar source is to avoid it altogether. Never open attachments or click on links present in emails from sources you do not know.

Files with sensitive information

Finally if you have written down your passwords and bank account details somewhere on a file in your computer, get rid of those after memorizing them as GOZeus and other similar malware are capable of digging out such information from the infected computer.

Ravi