A group of security experts has stated that if your computer has been infected with malware, it’s best to avoid restarting it. Instead, users should turn off their Wi-Fi, power off the computer, and begin looking for IT help.
A recent survey of 1,180 U.S. adults shows that 30 percent restarted their computer to deal with malware. But sometimes that can actually help the malware.
Bill Siegel, CEO & Co-Founder of Coveware said:
Generally, the [ransomware] executable that actually encrypts your data is designed to crawl through attached, mapped and mounted drives to a given machine.
Sometimes it trips, or is blocked by a permission issue and will stop encrypting. If you reboot the machine, it will start back up and try to finish the job.
In the cases of ransomware, rebooting your computer will only continue the encryption.
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.
Via The Mac Observer, web.stanford.edu, and ZDNet