CryptoLocker is like a digital pirate, holding your precious files hostage and demanding a king’s ransom for their release. This dastardly ransomware popped up in 2013 with a taste for PCs running Microsoft Windows. What does it do? It sneaks onto your computer, encrypting your data and locking you out until you pay up. Its mission? Cause chaos and demand some serious dough to fix it.

CryptoLocker spreads like wildfire through spam emails full of nasty attachments. It teams up with an external botnet to launch attacks, and once it’s in, it encrypts files on your device and even in cloud storage accounts (like Dropbox) if they’re synced locally.

The cherry on top? It slaps you with a message demanding bitcoin ransom for the decryption key, which is held hostage by the cyber baddies. So watch out for CryptoLocker and keep your digital world safe!