Smugly thinking my PC is safe (1 Viewer)

Uncle Gizmo · May 15, 2017

So I am sat here smugly thinking my PC is safe from this current hacking episode. Even if they do hack my PC I get all my documents backed up online automatically. Then I thought "hold on" --- ""My documents are safe because they are backed up automatically?"" NO...!!! They're not are they, if I get hacked, my documents will get encrypted and the encrypted versions will get backed up, overwriting my good documents === Shit... I think I'm going to have to have a rethink....

pbaldy · May 15, 2017

Depending on the backup software, you may be able to get previous versions. If you get hacked today, you could restore yesterday's backup.

Uncle Gizmo · May 15, 2017

pbaldy said:
Depending on the backup software, you may be able to get previous versions. If you get hacked today, you could restore yesterday's backup.

The problem is I'm using Google Drive and I don't believe there is an option for recovering backups. It never occurred to me that I would need "recovery" until it occurred to me just today... In other words I thought keeping the files online would be fine, if anything happened to my PC I just get a new PC log back online and there's all my files. That's why I felt safe, but now I don't feel safe! I'm going to have to get the DVD writer zipping along and use up some of my old rewritable CD's. Know of any decent software for doing this automatically?

pbaldy · May 15, 2017

Sorry, I don't. At work we use Barracuda which lets me recover previous versions. At home I just manually backup to an external drive every week or so. I think you're right to be concerned, the files would probably backup to the cloud and you'd be screwed.

These ransomware buggers can not only get your computer, they go through network shares. I had somebody at work that got their PC infected, and it got to a shared network folder. I wiped their PC, and recovered the network share from backup.

Uncle Gizmo · May 15, 2017

The worrying thing is there might be quite a few person's sat out there, like me, thinking they are safe and have things under control, and not realising the risk....

pbaldy · May 15, 2017

I agree, and good of you to raise the warning. Things like that are great for protecting you from your PC blowing up, but if the infected files get backed up and overwrite the good files, you're screwed. You also need to backup to the CD you're talking about, or a thumb/external drive that gets disconnected from the computer after backing up.

Uncle Gizmo · May 15, 2017

I've been discussing this in another thread and Andrew replied thus:- Andrew Horder TØny - for non-Google documents files (eg word, excel, jpg) you should have version control - https://support.google.com/drive/answer/2409045...

this is my "Uncle Gizmo" response:-
I've identified another possible problem. Sure, the individual GDrive file gets backed up, I see three versions, but the only way to get to the backup is to download each backup you require individually! Now that's not going to be nice for a full hard drives worth of files is it! So unless some bright spark has written a Google Apps Script for recovering backed up files from gdrive ............ Still it's a good job I'm thinking about it now and not after a hacking!

Gasman · May 16, 2017

Uncle Gizmo said:
The problem is I'm using Google Drive and I don't believe there is an option for recovering backups. It never occurred to me that I would need "recovery" until it occurred to me just today... In other words I thought keeping the files online would be fine, if anything happened to my PC I just get a new PC log back online and there's all my files. That's why I felt safe, but now I don't feel safe! I'm going to have to get the DVD writer zipping along and use up some of my old rewritable CD's. Know of any decent software for doing this automatically?

Tony,
Freefilesync is very good, but I have yet to find out how to append date and time to files, so just copy over the top each evening to keep the latest.

I'd be looking to create batch file that would append date and time to the filenames and copy to a usb hard disk that would run from task scheduler and a reminder to plug it in before the scheduled task is about to run. Remove when complete?, or shut computer down.

I'm sure most of the experts here are more than capable or creating something like this, if they do not have anything in place already.?

Edit: Just found versioning option in Freefilesync that will append date and time?

Uncle Gizmo · May 16, 2017

Gasman;1532500Freefilesync is very good[/QUOTE said:
Just downloaded FreeFileSync and having a play and I see that it has an option to upload files to my web hosting! FSTP, I know what FTP is, now I'm having a look to find out what FSTP is!

Synchronize With FSPT

If this works it will be very useful I can't stand the idea of continually swapping CD's !!!

Gasman · May 16, 2017

Secure File Transfer Protocol?

AccessBlaster · May 16, 2017

Gasman said:
Tony,
Freefilesync is very good, but I have yet to find out how to append date and time to files, so just copy over the top each evening to keep the latest.

The issue I have with this strategy is if you get a bug on your system between backups, now the buggy copy is your latest copy. I use a clean fresh image stored on a removable drive. I store a incremental copy on the removable, and one on the cloud.

Gasman · May 16, 2017

AccessBlaster said:
The issue I have with this strategy is if you get a bug on your system between backups, now the buggy copy is your latest copy. I use a clean fresh image stored on a removable drive. I store a incremental copy on the removable, and one on the cloud.

I agree. A good few years back I just used to use NTBackup to backup every Mon to Thurs. Fri would do a weekly backup and every 4th Fri a monthly backup, so Grandfather, Father Son type of backup.
Sadly I can no longet get NTbackup to work with windows versions after w2k.

However now I have found out the versioning option I'll give it a ago.
I actually use AllwaySync at home, so will need to see if that can do it, otherwise switch to Freefilesync and donate.

Sofiella · May 16, 2017

I would say if you dont want to worry about ensuring reliability and storage maintenance yourself, Amazon Glacier is an extremely low-cost storage service that provides secure and durable storage for data archiving and backup. My husband swears by Amazon Glacier. It might be worthwhile looking into.

Gasman · May 16, 2017

My first choice would always be local backup.
When I ripped my music collection, it was in the days of dial up, put a cd in, dial up, get the music list, and rip. 500 cds worth

Now it would be so much easier to rip, but after all that hard work, I have my music in about 4 different places. Only drawback is none off site (home) at present.

Sofiella said:
I would say if you dont want to worry about ensuring reliability and storage maintenance yourself, Amazon Glacier is an extremely low-cost storage service that provides secure and durable storage for data archiving and backup. My husband swears by Amazon Glacier. It might be worthwhile looking into.

The_Doc_Man · May 16, 2017

Uncle G (et al.) - as a former sys admin with security certificates and lots of experience, I will tell you that the first line of defense is always YOU. The hackers out there with their snarky ransomware are looking for folks who:

* Browse carelessly to unknown sites

* Don't make regular backups on a removable medium

* Don't patch when security patches become available

* Aren't suspicious about unsolicited e-mails from familiar sources

* Don't run A/V or network security software, or run it only at the lowest possible sensitivity

So if you want to be safer, do the opposite of the things I just listed.

AccessBlaster · May 16, 2017

Either use Linux and or a VM, or use a product like time freeze. Time freeze, freezes your current session until the next reboot at which time all changes are disregarded.

The_Doc_Man · May 19, 2017

If I thought I could get away with it, I would use a small-machine version of OpenVMS. In over 40 years, it has NEVER been hacked and CANNOT be hacked using "normal" network-based hacks. It has other flaws but is absolutely not susceptible to buffer overrun attacks. You also can't kill the O/S with other kinds of hacks such as code injection through certain buffers (other than overrun injection) though you can kill your own process with a good enough hack. But the problem, of course, is that not all popular utilities will run on it. It is also approaching end of life.

Unfortunately, a VM is not an ironclad safeguard. We had about 1000 servers running on a few VM servers with the Navy Enterprise Data Center in New Orleans and they were the subject of security patch notices all of the time. Not very many, but absolutely not zero. We ALSO got many UNIX-family patches including Linux.

The WannaCry worm might not affect VM or Linux right now, but I'm not holding my breath on that.

On the other hand, I read an article in the last couple of days that says WannaCry might be coming from North Korean hackers. Considering how strapped for cash DPRK has been, I wouldn't put it past them. If we could prove it, it would be time for someone to visit their borders and cut their wires.

AccessBlaster · May 19, 2017

The truth is average "Joe Six pack" sitting at home on their social media, doesn't really create much in the way of content. If you have a good clean image that includes your OS, and apps that you use. Then do simple incremental backups. I would say ransomware is the least of your worries. Heart attack or diabetes or no social life might be more pressing.

Smugly thinking my PC is safe (1 Viewer)

Uncle Gizmo

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