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Sophos Home Beta reads Sophos Free Encryption as Ransomware

Spryte

Dear Sophos,

I am a user of Sophos Home Beta Anti-Virus, Anti-Malware... and also Sophos Free Encryption (Ver 2.40.1.1).

This morning after doing some work for a friend I used Sophos Free Encryption to encrypt the file to put on his server. This is part of my normal workflow as his work is ratther sensitive. (I also keep some client data as well as ALL my logins and passwords in Sophos Free Encryption as it has worked well for me since you introduced it and my clients are savvy enough to understand it.)
Suddenly Sophos Home Beta pops up telling me I have a virus/malware/ransomware!
I did a scan (it picked up a couple of VB files I had created and archived years ago (and which have never before produced errors) and also told me I had Ransomware. When I investigated, it was Sophos Free Encryption that was labeled as the cullprit!? (See attached screenshot.)
I am now completely locked out of ALL my Sophos Free Encryption archives as it seems to be locked up by Sophos Home.
How do I get out of this mess?!

 

 

Any help greatly appreciated.

 

Regards

L. Paquette



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  • +1

    Hi,

     

    I will escalate this for you so it can be investigated, however the software you are using (PrivateCrypto) was retired in March 2015. However that doesn't mean we wouldn't want to fix this. I will update you when I have an answer for you.

     

    If you disabled the CryptoGuard component of Sophos Home you wouldn't get this detection anymore, of course I would only suggest doing that to gain access to your files, not as a permanent fix.

  • 0 in reply to PeterM

    Peter,

     

    Many thanks.

    Sophos Free Encryption seems to be working after a reboot so I got access to my files. The question remaining is why it was recognized as Ransomware (Even if it is old software)? Also some older VB programs that had never been flagged by any AV, including Sophos Home have now been flagged.

    Another issue is that your bloggers on Naked Security have been recently advising Sophos Free Encryption as an option when dealing with topics about encrypting your files. I have been using it without any issue since Win XP and hearing that it would work on Win10 was a bonus as I know and trust Sophos Free Encryption. I do hope I do not have to search for another option.

    Regards

    L

  • 0 in reply to Spryte

    Facing the same issue , Free Encryption Ransomware .......

  • 0 in reply to Fahad Hussain

    I got mine working again. Not sure if this is the proper way but I'll tell what I did:

     

    Open the Sophos application and click on Manage Settings.

    Once you've logged in, go to Antivirus, then under Potentially Unwanted Application Exceptions add both of the following:

    C:\Program Files (x86)\Sophos\SafeGuard PrivateCrypto\pcrypt.exe or whatever the full path is to Sophos Free Encryption

    and

    pcrypt.exe

     

    Now you can Logout, shut down all open programmes and reboot. (Actually I prefer to power off and wait a few minutes to power on again.)

    After that all seemed to be working properly and I've had no issues since.

    Also there was an update to Sophos Home Beta. Perhaps that helped.

     

    Hope this Helps

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