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Is it a good solution that rename an important files to a new file type that only owner od the file know? like Data.Rar rename it to Data.BEATURAN, so it will become BEATURAN File and just rename extension back to it original known file .Rar when need it at a safe place?

Thanks in advance.

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    A lot of ransomwares will encrypt all files no matter what the extension is. So I would say that would not be a good solution because it would not be reliable enough based on the different variants of ransomwares and how they work. Best defense against ransomwares is to have consistent backups of your systems – nd510 Mar 13 '17 at 3:04
  • Thank you for your advice, so can you tell me what is a good solution? – Sok Dymang Mar 13 '17 at 3:05
  • best solution is to have consistent backups of your systems. So if ransomware hits then you can just rollback to a previous version of your OS when it did not exist. Other than that, I know MalwareBytes and Kaspersky have anti-ransomware defenses in their softwares – nd510 Mar 13 '17 at 3:08
  • Thank you, I also use malwarebyte with premium licenses to protect and I have a daily backup my important file or documents to cloud storage, is that good enough? – Sok Dymang Mar 13 '17 at 3:10
  • yes that's perfect. So if you do get ransomeware, you will just need to reinstall the OS and then download you files from the cloud. Along with this precaution, just be a smart user and you should never get ransomware, just know exactly what you are downloading and where you're visiting. Also another great idea if you ever need to download something shady is to use a Virtual Machine (VM). If anything happens bad to the VM, you just delete it and then fire up another one and your actual system is perfectly safe. I'd research VirtualBox – nd510 Mar 13 '17 at 3:15
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De facto, many ransomware variants target specific file types that promise to be valuable to the owner (text documents, images, etc.). This way the ransomware can operate more efficiently and doesn't risk the stability of the host system by accidentally encrypting system files. Hence, it's plausible that randomly renaming the extensions of important files could eventually leave them unencrypted in case of an attack.

But I'd advise against doing that because it's basically a security by obscurity pattern: You focus on an obscure hiding technique instead of preventing malware infections in the first place. Ransomware developers can take other approaches to determine the real file type (content sniffing) and not all ransomware encrypts solely based on extensions. Instead, your time is best spent at making sure your run a fully patched system and do regular backups.

You can find many ransomware threads with great advice on the site, e.g.:

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Renaming individual files might protect against some types of ransomware but not others.

Some target files, and others target the entire hard drive, like happened in Saudi, where the boot sector and partition tables were wiped, making the drives appear to have been completely erased. This is especially effective on encrypted drives.

Whole drives can be made unavailable by encrypting the partition table, which is quick and effective. In that case, it doesn't care what files are on there.

Your best protection against ransomware is to keep good backups.

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