A new research paper by two University of Illinois students and their assistant professor proposes a new approach to tackling ransomware attacks that takes advantage of “properties of flash-based storage that currently exist in most laptops, desktops, mobiles, and even IoT devices.”
The innovative approach relies on the way flash-based solid-state drives (SSDs) handle file modifications. When a file is altered, SSDs initially keep the old version of the file, while saving the new version to a different location. The research describes a tool that can take advantage of this feature in the case of a file-encrypting ransomware attack by restoring the encrypted files to their original unencrypted state so that no user data is lost.
Read more: Researchers fight ransomware attacks by leveraging properties of flash-based storage
