Author profile

Brendan Smith

Cybersecurity analyst covering malware families, suspicious files, and detection alerts. Brendan focuses on clear explanations of what a warning means, when it may be a false positive, and which cleanup steps are appropriate.

9,724 articles Malware detection Suspicious files False-positive checks

Published work

Recent articles by Brendan Smith

ASH Virus 🔐 (.ASH Files) — How to Remove?

The Ash virus belongs under the Dcrtr ransomware family. Ransomware of such sort encrypts all user's data on the computer (photos, documents, excel tables,...

CMLOCKER Ransomware 🔐 [.CMLOCKER File Virus]

Our researchers have discovered the CMLOCKER ransomware-type program while investigating new submissions to VirusTotal. The program encrypts data and demands ransoms for the decryption...