Emsisoft joins global fight against ransomware criminals

Ransomware is malware that locks up your files and demands a ransom to return them. This form of malware has quickly become the most lucrative form of cybercrime as victims feel forced to pay. Emsisoft are proud to announce their associate partnership with the No More Ransom Project, an initiative by the National High Tech Crime Unit of the Netherlands’ police, Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre and two cyber security companies – Kaspersky Lab and Intel Security – with the goal to help victims of ransomware retrieve their encrypted data without having to pay the criminals. Emsisoft Anti-Malware was developed to protect users against all kinds of internet threats including ransomware. So we see this partnership as a great opportunity to contribute to a cause we have always been passionate about and to further advance the Emsisoft vision for a malware-free world.

One of the No More Ransom Project stated aims is “to educate users about how ransomware works and what countermeasures can be taken to effectively prevent infection.”We at Emsisoft share this commitment to increase security awareness and prevention through our security blog and regular outbreak updates on our social media channels on Twitter and Facebook. Emsisoft has always been very concerned with ransomware and very active in helping victims. As part of our partnership, we will be providing 10 decrypters to the existing eight that were previously available. Overall, our existing decrypters have been downloaded more than 400,000 times and Fabian Wosar, Emsisoft Chief Technology Officer and head of the Emsisoft Malware Lab has had so much involvement in cracking ransomware that he has been personally targeted by ransomware families with abuse, offers to sell him decrypters and even to ask for help!

Fabian is delighted to contribute free decrypters to this vital project. “We are honored to be part of this project and to have the opportunity to make our decrypter more widely available. We are particularly excited to not only help the victims of ransomware, but to support the law enforcement agencies to identify and take down the cyber criminals that create and distribute it.”