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From: Paul S Person <psperson@old.netcom.invalid>
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Subject: Re: xkcd: CrowdStrike
Date: Sat, 03 Aug 2024 10:33:45 -0700
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On Fri, 2 Aug 2024 17:23:12 -0000 (UTC), Mike Van Pelt
<usenet@mikevanpelt.com> wrote:

>In article <d44qaj1qpguo4ae3onpfi359hpp3823mj6@4ax.com>,
>Paul S Person  <psperson@old.netcom.invalid> wrote:
>>On Fri, 2 Aug 2024 16:41:48 -0000 (UTC), Mike Van Pelt
>><usenet@mikevanpelt.com> wrote:
>>>... it'll be "mass
>>>ransomware attack and nobody will get their data back without
>>>paying a billion to Putin's hacker brigades."
>>
>>Backups are the key here. Daily backups, and to items unlikely to be
>>affected (provided the hackers ignore USB/WiFi drives) or (not daily
>>but not too ancient either) USB thumb drives that /are not attached to
>>any computer/ and so cannot be reached by the kernal, however hacked.
>>
>>/Serious/ backups, that's what I am talking about.
>
>Yeah.  Alas, too many backups turn out to have been accessible by
>the miscreants, or the backup process turns out to be less useful
>for producing actual backups that can be recovered from than you
>would hope.

If I understand Microsoft's backup correctly, everying is on a single
attached drive in a format optimized for restoring prior versions
rather than copying the backup to another separate storage device and
then detaching that device.

>The backup process needs to be verified to produce backups
>usable for quickly restoring function, but this is very
>rarely tested.

I occasionally test mine, usually when I have changed a file and need
to get the older version back.

This isn't the same as getting everything back, of course, but the
program I use (and probably others) allows a System Backup to be
mounted as a disk drive and explored. A problem with my laptop caused
me to to this and I can verify that the directory structure, at least,
was traversible. If it has to be done for real, just be sure that it
is a /copy/ of the System Backup that is being used, just in case. A
certain amount of paranoia is appropriate and helpful here.

And then there are those awful events where a full-scale test of the
backup is the /only/ way to recover the data after (say) re-installing
the OS or (even more fun) re-formatting the entire drive. Those always
worked for me provided, of course, that everything that needed to be
backed up was actually being backed up. But that is a matter of
configuring the backup tasks properly. And that is a battle between
safety and storage space for the backups.
--=20
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"