PC Locked by Ransomware - How to Remove Latvijas Policijas Virus

Latvijas Policijas virus description:

Latvijas Policijas virus is a dangerous and horrific ransomware that can lock the targeted computer for no reason. It is designed by cyber criminals to lurk into your compromised PC via exploiting system holes and other channels. Once installed, it will change your system settings and delete your important registry files. Terminate your several programs and block Internet access. Commonly, it will pretend to be the local government and then send you the bogus notification.

It claims that you have violated the law, such as visit prohibited and unauthorized websites, download adult-oriented and illegal materials and contents, etc. You are asked to pay a certain amount of fine within 48 to 72 hours in order to unlock your PC and restore your data. However, it is a total scam and they won't keep their promise. The only way is to find a surefire way to remove Latvijas Policijas virus promptly and fully from your PC.

How can you delete Latvijas Policijas virus manually from your compromised PC?

Follow the instructions to delete Latvijas Policijas virus as quickly as you can.

Step 1: If this ransomware blocks you into Safe Mode with Networking, you can try to start your computer into Safe Mode with Command Prompt by pressing F8 key many times. And then press Enter to proceed.

Step 2: Once the Command Prompt appears, type "explorer" and then hit Enter key to proceed.

Step 3: Then Windows Explorer will show up browse to:

Windows XP: C:\windows\system32\restore\rstrui.exe and press Enter.
Windows Vista/7: C:\windows\system32\rstrui.exe and press Enter.

Step 4: You can go to Start menu and launch Run, and then type regedit into the Run box and click OK to open Registry Editor.

Step 5: In the registry editor window, you should navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\Current Verson\Winlogon\

Step 6: In the right side of the window locate "Shell", right click on it. And then click on Modify.

Step 7: Find Shell in the right hand panel and then change its value into Explorer.exe by right clicking it if the value is different.

Step 8: Save the changes and then restart your PC normally.

Automatic removal:

In fact, it is not advised to get rid of Latvijas Policijas virus manually if you have difficulty in editing files and registry entries. Any mistake may result in irreparable PC damage. Why not use an automatic removal tool to remove this ransomware with a few clicks of the mouse. It can deeply scan your Windows PC, detect and remove the threat from roots. Keep in mind that you should keep it updated on a regular basis.

Spyware - The Snooper's Toolkit

Spyware is surreptitious software that gathers private information from your computer without your consent or knowledge and transmits the data it collects to someone else, silently in the background, using your internet connection.

Spyware can collect almost all types of data, including internet surfing habits, user logins, as well as bank and credit card information, along with your PINs, using key-loggers to record every stroke of your fingers. It can scan files on your hard drive, snoop on other applications (such as chat programs or word processors), install further spyware programs, and read cookies, relaying the information it gathers back to its author.

Spyware can also change the default home page on your browser or redirect your browser to web pages other than the ones you want. Some spyware can even change computer settings.

It is usually difficult to detect and is nearly always malicious in intent. Indeed recent surveys suggest that more than 60 percent of computers are infected with some form of spyware, and that more than 90 percent of users found to have spyware in their computers are not aware of it.

What are the dangers?

By monitoring your activity on the internet, spyware enables targeted advertising. In other words, it providers advertisers with the data they need to bombard you with ads based on your perceived preferences according to your internet activity. In this case, it is known as adware.

The result of tracking your behaviour in this way is a plethora of unsolicited pop-up ads. These can be really annoying, though hardly dangerous.

More seriously, because spyware is using memory and system resources as it runs in the background to gather and send information back to its home base via your internet connection, it can lead to system instability or crashes.

It can also have a negative effect on your computer's performance by installing additional software, redirecting web browser searches, changing computer settings, reducing connection speeds, changing the homepage or even completely disrupting network connection ability.

You can cope with all these problems. The real danger is the very strong possibility of financial fraud using your bank account and credit card details that, along with the related PINs, spyware collects when you engage in internet banking.

How does spyware get into your computer?

Spyware is usually installed when you download some free software or shareware you actually want... the spyware piggybacks on the installation. One of the commonest ways to become a victim of spyware is by downloading some of the peer-to-peer file swapping products that are available today.

The writers of spyware programs often simply repackage freeware and bundle it with their own spyware. Others may pay shareware developers to bundle their spyware with legitimate software.

Indeed, the licensing agreements that accompany software downloads sometimes warn the user that a spyware program will be installed along with the desired applications. Unfortunately, few people read these agreements before clicking I agree or Yes. But even if you read these agreements closely, you will notice that the reference to the spyware is usually couched in obtuse, hard-to-read legal disclaimers.

What can you do to prevent spyware getting in?

There are several ways you can try to prevent your computer from being infected with spyware:

• Don't download free programs or applications unless you are absolutely sure that they are OK. Think: why would anyone create a piece of valuable software and give it away free of charge?
• Read licensing agreements carefully and if they are couched in obscure legalese, forget about it.
• Be ultra-careful when using peer-to-peer file swapping.
• Undertake regular maintenance of your system.
• Ensure you anti-virus software is updated regularly and that it checks incoming software before it is installed.

But no matter how careful you are, you are bound to join the 60 percent plus of users who are the victims of spyware in some form or other.

How do you get rid of spyware?

Getting rid of spyware is more art than science as many writers of spyware make removing these malicious programs purposely difficult. Some of the code may be hidden from Windows.

But with a few free tools, plenty of time, some know-how and a bit of luck you can do it. First the tools... four free tools you can download online:

• Microsoft's Malicious Software Removal Tool... available free of charge from microsoft.com
• Microsoft's Windows Defender... available free of charge from microsoft.com
• SuperAntiSpyware... available as free edition and professional (paid) edition from superantispyware.com. The free edition does a decent job of removing spyware or viruses.
• Your anti-virus program... (You do have an anti-virus program installed, don't you?)

Note that some spyware can prevent you from downloading these tools or even from visiting the Microsoft website. If this happens, download the applications to another computer, copy the installers to a USB drive, plug that drive into your computer and install from the USB.

Spyware usually manifests itself as slower-than-normal performance. But poor performance can be due to other (unrelated) reasons, such as having a hard drive that has not been fragmented for some time or is full, running too many applications with insufficient system memory, or bugs in a program that prevent memory being freed up when you close it. Check these factors out first before deciding that you have spyware.

Then, follow these four steps:

[1] Run the Malicious Software Removal Tool first... making sure that you have downloaded the latest version before running it. Though this tool only searches for a small fraction of all the malware you can pick up, the ones it finds are the most serious threats. If this tool does not find anything, go on to the next step.

[2] Use Windows Defender, after first making sure you have the latest updates, to perform a full scan. If the program finds malware, follow the on-screen instructions to get rid of it. You may need to reboot your computer as some spyware does not let you uninstall it while Windows is running. If this tool also comes up empty, do step 3.

[3] Go to www.superantispyware.com and download and install the free edition of the software. Once the software is installed, click on scan your computer. The scan will take several minutes depending on HDD space and then remove any threats that have been found.

If Super Antispyware cannot find the problem, go on to the next step.

[4] Run a full scan using your anti-virus program. This will take several hours, perhaps overnight. The program should deal with any suspect files automatically.

It is unlikely that one of these three programs will not solve your spyware problem. However if that is the case then you have picked up new type of spyware that has not yet been included in the anti-spyware databases. Now you need to check every process running on your computer to see if any of them is spyware. This can be quite a daunting task.

Though there are tools that can help you by showing you everything that is running on your PC, enabling you to decide whether a particular program is legitimate or not, running them requires a certain amount of expertise. Caution: you should be aware that if you perform certain removal steps improperly, your computer could become inoperable. Thus it would be best to seek expert help.

Alternatively you could go nuclear... this entails backing up all your data onto external media, formatting your hard disk and then reinstalling your operating system using the DVD that came with the computer when it was new. You will then have to reinstall all the applications you have as well as all your data files. This will probably take hours, perhaps a whole day to re-install everything. But you'll end up with a super-clean machine that's as fast as the day you bought it.

Using online expertise

Removing spyware seems a scary task if you have never worked on your computer before. If you don't feel up to removing it yourself you will need outside help from expert technicians.

One solution is to bring your computer down to a computer repair shop or get a technician to visit your home or office. This can be expensive, probably costing at least €100.

A less costly solution, which is just as reliable, is to contact an online maintenance and repair service. The service will, with your permission, open a secure connection into your computer from a remote location and take care of your spyware problem while you watch the process on your screen or do something else. Expect to pay about €25 at the most for this kind of service.

A bonus with the online solution is that the technician who handles your problem will have a supervisor and plenty of back-up experts to hand for additional advice. Repair shops normally only have one or, at the most, two technicians on the premises.

Beware CryptoLocker Virus!

I typically don't like to put out a warning every time a new virus rears its ugly head. I worry that by issuing a warning about specific computer viruses that it creates the perception that people should only worry about viruses we talk about it - instead of being constantly on the alert.

The sad reality is that hundreds of viruses and variants of existing viruses are flung onto the Internet every single day. So, raising an alert about one particular virus seems silly in some respects. However, in this case, I think that reminding people of the need to be ever vigilant by talking about this particular piece of nasty is worthwhile.

I spent much of my Thanksgiving weekend recovering about 50,000 files that were damaged by one single infection of the virus generally called CryptoLocker. Here's what it does. First, it applies strong encryption to any documents (Word, Excel, PDF, etc) it can find on the host computer or any network shares. This encryption essentially makes the files unreadable (unless you have the decryption code). Second, the virus posts a ransom message asking for $300 on the user's computer! It's simply a 21st century shake-down.

Apparently, if you pay the $300 (through untraceable online payment methods) they will decrypt your files and make them accessible to you again. Sometimes, though, the decryption doesn't work - they didn't spend as much time developing the decryption component as they did the encryption part. Scary huh?

You can't decrypt the files on your own. Your only option, if you don't want to pay the ransom, is to restore your files from backup (which is what I did for this particular client).

How did they get the virus? It's hard to tell but it appears this one can come from various sources. It could have been from an attachment on an e-mail, or from an infected website, or maybe it was dropped by another virus.

But, you say, it couldn't happen to you because you have antivirus installed. Right? Wrong! The major antivirus software vendors don't seem to be able to catch this virus before it does its damage. Now, that's scary! The good news is that there is a way to block the virus by making a configuration change on your network. If you're a client of ours, we've already done that for you. If not, contact me and I'll tell you how.

The bottom line? It's always education and awareness. People need to be suspicious of unexpected file attachments. They need to understand that banks, couriers nor Microsoft will e-mail you asking for credentials or information. It's common sense. If you aren't sure about a website or an e-mail, then pick up the phone and call. Be suspicious. A little bit of paranoia can save you a lot of headaches and lost time.

How Spammers Find Your Email Address

Spammers use a variety of techniques to harvest email addresses. However the two main techniques are (a) the use of automated spiders and (b) directory harvesting.

Automated spiders

These are software agents that are known under a variety of names... spiders, crawlers, robots and bots. These spiders are the seekers of content on the internet. They form the basis of how search engines, such as Google and Yahoo!, work.

Search engine spiders trawl the internet unceasingly looking for content. Their searches are based on important words known as key words. The engines keep an index of the words they find and the website where they find them. Users of the search engines can then find these sites by keying in the search words. A major search engine will index hundreds of millions of pages, and respond to tens of millions of queries every day.

A spammer collects email addresses in a similar way... by sending an automated spider throughout the internet looking for addresses that are found on web pages or in links used to send emails. The spider sends them back to the person who is compiling the spam list.

The spammer's spider will trawl a variety of websites looking for addresses. These include dating sites, chat rooms, message boards, Usenet newsgroups; in fact any type of webpage that might conceivably contain an address.

If you have ever sent your address to anyone on the internet, have inserted it in a form or have you own webpage with your address on it, you can be absolutely sure that your email address has been harvested by numerous spiders working for compilers of spam lists.

Directory harvesting

A directory harvesting attack, aka a dictionary attack, is another common technique for creating lists of addresses. It is used to collect addresses from internet service providers (ISPs), mail services such as Yahoo!, Hotmail and AOL, and large companies with their own mail servers.

The attacking software sends millions of emails to addresses on a particular server. It makes these addresses up using sequences of minor variations on a basic address. For example, the software could send the same email to a series of addresses such as akennedy / bkennedy / / ckennedy@yahoo.com and so on.

Nearly all these addresses will be invalid, in which case the server will respond with an SMTP 550 error message. The harvesting software will ignore these addresses. But every now and then the software will get lucky and the server will respond with a message that an email address is valid. The software will compile all the valid addresses into a list for spamming.

The software will probably send out millions of email messages just to find a few hundred valid addresses, so this seems a very inefficient way to harvest email addresses. But the whole process is automated, so it costs the spammer very little.

Other email collection techniques

There are several other ways email addresses can be harvested.

One of these is to set up a webpage offering to send a product or service free of charge as long as the user provides an email address. Examples of these kinds of sites are those that promise to send a joke-of-the-day, daily quotes from the bible, news or stock alerts, and so on. I recently came across a site that stated that there could be a registered sex offender in my area and that I could get further information by email!

In sum... there is little you can do to avoid having your address harvested by spammers. The best you can do is to make sure you are running good anti-spam software and that you keep it up to date.

Stop Leechers From Compromising Your Website And Your Computing Resources

Leeches are worms that predominantly suck blood and feed on blood from vertebrate and invertebrate animals. Historically, leeches were widely used for medical purposes in Greece and India to remove blood from patients. Modernly, in the internet world however, web administrators and website owners associate leeches with more subtle ends, rather than the sucking of blood, merely the sucking of computing resources. This historical association is modernly used to associate users across the internet who use resources on a network without paying for them or giving anything back to the network.

On a torrent network a leecher is someone who downloads files without adequately contributing to the network, in a meaningful way - typically by disconnecting from the network as soon as he/she has completely downloaded the file. On other networks, a leecher is someone who benefits from the network or gathers information from the network and offers nothing in return. In economic terms, such users are called free riders. For example, a member of a labor union who does not pay any dues but benefits from the efforts of the union.

As a website owner, you should be concerned about leechers using your resources such as disk space, bandwidth and other computing resources such as processing power or memory. This may occur when users that are authorized by you to use the website use it in a manner that is not authorized or intended by you. For example, a university may offer its students a cloud storage space for educational purposes, and some students may maliciously use such storage space to store movies or mp3 files, which is not necessarily illegal or wrong - but is not the intended use of the resource offered to the students.

This may also occur in a small or medium business, where employees are offered storage space on the network to store the data they need, so that they can access it from multiple locations through the internet - but the employees may end up using the storage space for completely unrelated purposes, such as to store personal information and files. Users may also end up sharing the login information with other people and allow them to use those resources for unintended uses.

As a website owner, depending on whether your resources are scarce and based on the cost benefit of having such leechers, you may want to terminate such leechers. The next obvious question that arises is, how you would identify such leechers, and how you would terminate them. Obviously it is not feasible to individually eliminate each user and verify each user, but there ought to be a system to identify usage patterns and alert you when there is a risk of leechers being on your network.

Many popular web hosting interface providers offer leech protection, and it is widely used in the industry to prevent leeching activity. Mr. Ruzbeh Raja a web administrator at a popular web hosting company said that "Preventing leechers is a priority for many website owners and, indeed widely used by our clients to prevent waste of resources". Mr. Raja further said that users being offered an unlimited web hosting plan in particular should be concerned about leechers given that they do not have a particular set limit of the resources they can use, he said that this would cause them to run the risk of being caught as abusing their account as a whole.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/8271667

What Are Security Best Pratices? Why Follow Them?

Everyone should be concerned about computer security. It determines whether your confidential information is safe from cyber thieves. Computers with weak defenses can endanger your financial health and your family's personal safety.

The number of computer criminals and attacks continues to grow and so does the sophistication. Cyberspace is becoming increasingly dangerous. You must take steps to protect yourself. You can do so by implementing what is known as "security best practices".

What are security best practices? The phrase refers to procedures; awareness of processes and habits that you routinely perform to "harden" your computer. Let's examine a few. 1. Use robust passwords - Your password should consist of at least 11 characters and include one uppercase letter and one special character. Avoid using common, pop culture words, birthdays of families and friends, the name of your pet, or other easy terms that could be easily discovered.

2. Always lock you machine - When you leave your computer unattended lock the workstation. Otherwise your machine would be accessible to anyone who is nearby.

3. Avoid downloading apps, screen savers and software from unknown sources. Malicious hackers frequently use malware embedded inside desirable products and offer them free. Once you have downloaded the software it can borough into your computer system and wreak havoc. Your computer may even become a "bot" and attack others.

4. Avoid opening email attachments from unknown senders - Malicious software could be installed on your system.

5. Double-check requests for information that you receive from a company with whom you do business. It could be a "phishing attack". Cyber criminals are skilled and can present to you a screen that appears to be from a trusted source. Crackers have duplicated a fake request for information from PayPal, for example, to gain personal information under false pretenses.

6. Avoid questionable websites that focus on gambling, porn or get rich quick schemes. Many of these sites will automatically scan your computer for known vulnerabilities and, once found, exploit them. Your system will be compromised.

7. Install an antivirus software package and use it. There are a number of excellent products on the market. Antivirus software looks for virus signatures and blocks them.

8. Change your wireless router's password from the factory setting. Certain routers ship with a default password that may be known to hackers. Anyone who is within range trying of your signal can intercept it and access your network.

9. Avoid sharing media with your computer. Malicious software could be downloaded onto your machine from a friend or associate's USB drive, for example, without your knowledge.

10. Perform a "white hat hack" on your system. Such a procedure can identify any vulnerabilities that exist. Gibson Research has an excellent and free program.

11. Keep your software updated. Install recommended patches from the publisher. Consider automating the process. Malicious computer users are up-to-date on vulnerabilities and know what to attack.

12. Install and use a firewall. There are both hardware and software firewalls. You can block specific senders when using a firewall.

13. Terminate your Internet connection when you finish your work. The Internet is one of the biggest attack venues. Disable your connection to the Internet and reduce the attack surface that nefarious hackers can use.

14. Encrypt your critical information. A number of free or inexpensive encryption programs are published, such as PGP (Pretty Good Privacy).

15. Consider using more than one way method to access your computing resources. A password is one level of authentication (something you know). Consider using a token (which you possess). Use a fingerprint reader (something you are).

16. Be discrete when using social media. Cyber criminals prowl sites of this type for scraps of information that can be used in exploits against you.

Computer Viruses: All You Need to Know

A virus could be a sort of malware that, once dead, replicates by inserting copies of itself (possibly modified) into different laptop programs, data files, or the boot sector of the exhausting drive; once this replication succeeds, the affected parts are then "infected".

We all apprehend laptop viruses and other forms of malware that will cause issues starting from irritating to ruinous. Some malware replicates itself till it fills up all offered area on your drive, turning your laptop into a brick. Other forms corrupt information on your machine or create your laptop unstable. Many can even decide to use your e-mail programs to distribute the malicious code to everybody in your contacts list. And there is invariably the likelihood a cracker a malicious hacker that can use malware to induce remote access to your laptop.

No one desires to have a laptop infected with a nasty virus. That is why it is very vital to practice safe computing habits and to put in reliable anti-virus software system. You'll avoid most malware simply by being attentive and staying far from many common traps. If your anti-virus software system is up so far, you will be in pretty fine condition.

But not so often, viruses get past our defenses. Perhaps our anti-virus software system is out of date or is compromised by a very clever little bit of code. At times we tend to click on a link inadvertently and activate a virus. Or somebody else used our laptop and downloaded some malware by mistake.

How does one understand if your laptop has been hit by a virus? If your anti-virus software system is powerful and updated, you will probably receive a message because the application scans your laptop. That makes detection of a virus easy. What if your software system is out of date or the virus has managed to switch off the anti-virus program? There are signs that can tell you if a virus is present on your computer.

A virus is a program that spreads by first infecting files or the system areas of a pc or network router's disc drive then creating copies of itself. Some viruses are not damaging, others could harm information files, and a few could destroy files. Viruses were easily spread when people shared portable devices and email messages.

Unlike worms, viruses typically need some variety of user action (e.g., opening email attachment or visiting a malicious internet page) to unfold.