A new danger is circulating online: it’s the “Filecoder” virus, insidious because it pretends to be Chrome.
From the laboratories of the company Eset – a reality active in the IT security sector – we learn that a new virus is beginning to spread also in Italy.
It is “Filecoder”, in technical jargon a ransomware: in fact, it is a program that, once fraudulently installed on your PC, activates a procedure to lock certain files.
At this point, to regain possession of your documents, you will have to pay a real ransom.
Otherwise, the content of the PC will become unusable.
Filecoder is starting to claim many victims in our country as well because it manages to “impersonate” Chrome.
“The virus “Win32/Filecoder.NFR”, in fact, manifests itself like a file necessary for the execution of Google’s browsing browser, not surprisingly its name is “chrome.exe”; once downloaded, therefore, it begins to take action, starting to encrypt files on the PC.
At this point the user will see a window appear on which they can read the “claim” and the request for ransom, expressed in bitcoin.
Compared to other threats of this type, FileCoder is characterized by having a certain weight: it is indeed 45 MB in size while other viruses of this kind usually have less impact. However, the choice to make it so large probably stems from the fact that in this way the average user might be led to think that it is actually an executable file of Chrome.
The advice from ESET technicians to avoid infection is the same as that generally used to protect oneself from viruses: first of all, always update your antivirus and use a firewall. It is also recommended to install the Windows security patches that Microsoft releases every month, precisely to keep the PC always well updated.
Similarly, it will be very important to always update the browsing browser you usually use.
In the case of FileCoder, it is also recommended to use a user that is not the PC administrator.
Furthermore, it is recommended not to download programs from uncertain sources, as well as email attachments.
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