HELP! I have a cryptolocker virus on a POS station!

Modified on Thu, 22 Dec, 2022 at 3:28 PM

Overview

There's great news and bad news. The great news is that all the data for your POS software is synchronized to the Cloud Retailer cloud every 30 seconds or so. The likelihood that the crypto locker was able to lock anything important as far as the POS system is concerned is very low.

Additionally, getting the POS setup on a new machine is pretty quick.

The bad news is that you will need to wipe the machine clean or get a new machine before we can/will reinstall the POS. This can be done by any professional computer technician. It's very simple for someone that has experience.

If the technician asks if you'd prefer to have them "try to fix it" / remove the virus - the answer is a hard no. Crypto lockers and other viruses typically get dug in and once there your computer will not operate at 100%. It will always act a little "off" and more importantly will always be a security concern. The only way forward is to wipe it and start the operating system over from scratch. The success rate is so low and the security risks so high that we will not reinstall on a machine that hasn't been wiped clean.

If you had other valuable files on the machine - they are likely lost. We recommend that you backup all non-POS files on a regular basis.

Average Time to Complete

Once the machine is wiped clean contact our technical team to begin the reinstall. Reinstallation of the POS software consumes 45 minutes of premium services, 1.5X for emergency/after hours services as a standard. This includes the time it took to original diagnose that a crypto locker is on the system. It does not include the time to conduct a reformat the machine - our expectation is that a 3rd party will do this and will only reengage us once the machine has been wiped AND all windows updates have been applied.

Additionally:

If for whatever reason the POS stations had stopped syncing (as it was visible in the upper right-hand corner of the POS screen) and sales continued to be run, those sales would be unrecoverable. Cloud Retailer / RITE bears no responsibility for this lost data.
The flat rate mentioned above includes POS reinstall ONLY. If you require additional applications like Google Chrome, Microsoft Word, etc. This time is not included. Any requires outside of the scope of POS reinstall will be billed at a time and materials rate.
Dealing with crypto locker issues on a machine other than a POS station is outside of the scope of this document and should be handled on a case by case basis.