
Ask HN: Friend hit with locky today, does paying ransom work? - bkmartin
Someone I know got hit with locky ransomware today.  It infected their pc plus some server drives.  Those drives can be restored from backups but the pc is not backed up.  I told them I would ask the general community if anyone knows if paying the ransom actually works.  Does the decrypter actually work? Hard to trust a crook. Anyone know if the decrypter installed a backdoor?  Any analysis done on that yet? Hard time finding anyone on the internet talking about it in this way.
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NetTechM
As far as I have seen, the people that pay the ransom do get the decryption
key (as the University of Calgary did)however the price varies and can be
expensive.

If I were your friend, I would try to restore from a restore point. Barring
that, paying the ransom and once you have access to your files make an
external copy on a separate disk (for analysis) and then wipe the infected
computer with a new image.

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mtmail
There is the risk the authors simply demand more money
[https://blog.varonis.com/hospital-paid-ransom-didnt-get-
all-...](https://blog.varonis.com/hospital-paid-ransom-didnt-get-all-files-
back/)

