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Best practices for protecting against WannaCry ransomware

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What is ransomware ? Malicious software that locks a device, such as a computer, tablet or smartphone and then demands a ransom to unlock it. The message that flashed up on hundreds of thousands of screens infected by the WannaCry virus over the last few days demanded payment of $300 (275 euros) in Bitcoin, saying: “Ooops, your files have been encrypted!” . It warned that if payment was not made within three days the price would double, and if none was received within seven days the locked files would be deleted. “ Bitcoin   is digital cash. The transactions are totally anonymous and non-refundable. However, they are totally traceable. “All the transactions are stored in databases called blockchains. It’s anonymous but anyone can monitor a bitcoin address. “ Bitcoin   doesn’t need a bank so this monetary flow escapes any supervision and any checks. The accounts don’t have a physical address or a bank address and they are not stored centrally anonymity comes before anythi...
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Verify the Integrity of the Software using MD5 HASH

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The MD5 Message-Digest Algorithm is a widely used cryptographic hash function that produces a 128-bit (16-byte) hash value. MD5 has been employed in a wide variety of security applications, and is also commonly used to check data integrity. It is widely used by publishers of downloadable material on the internet to ensure the authenticity of the downloaded content. To do so the publisher supplies the hash value together with the download link to the file. The user is then able to compare the two values after download by calculating the MD5 hash value of the downloaded file. There are some utilities available on the Internet for free download that will calculate these digests. When downloading programs from mirror sites, it’s always a good idea to check the integrity of those files, to ensure that nobody has altered it either accidentally or maliciously. Let us check the small MD5 program "MD5 calculator". The MD5 Calculator is a program that will enable you t...
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