Yesterday was a joyous day in the world of computer security for victims of TeslaCrypt Ransomware.

TeslaCrypt was a family of ransomware that had evolved over time to become more and more difficult to defeat.  However, persistent work by code breakers was making a dent – and yesterday, the creators of TeslaCrypt threw in the towel. All too often, the “bad guys” have had the advantage in the war to keep your data safe.

They publicly disclosed the “master key” that allows all victims of the TeslaCrypt Ransomware attack to recover their data; while at the same time disabling the websites they were using to collect their ransom payments!

Following this move, anti-ransomware researchers were quick to utilize this “master key” in a program that can be used to recover lost files.  The repair utility is free to use by anyone who has been infected.

To benefit from this fix, anyone affected by the ransomware would have had to keep the copies of the “damaged” files.  If you’ve discarded them, nothing can be done. Those who were fortunate enough to have created backups of their data prior to being infected with ransomware would have already had the means to recover their data.

The decoder can be downloaded from here, although you may still require technical assistance to use it if you don’t understand the instructions.

If you require assistance implementing this fix, please contact your IT support person, or if you don’t have one, you should contact Jack Eisenberg at [email protected] from Safe and Secure Computing.