How to protect me against NotPetya/Petya/Petna/SortaPetya ransomware?

This is meant to be a very quick guide on how to protect yourself against Petya ransomware and its variants. If you want to know more about this or any other ransomware, Google is your friend.

You can just skip this boring manual process and use Xtra Protect that will do this for you automatically.

In the unlikely event of a failed attempt from Xtra Protect to protect your computer, please keep reading to protect your computer manually.

To protect your computer from Petya do the following:

1 – Open Notepad

2 – Save the file with the name “perfc”

3 – Copy that file twice, we need 3 files.

4 – Remove the file extension – you should have a file named “perfc.txt” you need to remove the “.txt” from the file name.
To do that, open any folder and go to “Folder Options” > “View” > uncheck the option “Hide extensions for known file types”, do “OK”.

4.1 – Remove the extension “.txt”, and replace the other two files “.txt” extension to “.dll” and “.dat”.

4.2 – Now you should have 3 files, “perfc”, “perfc.dll” and “perfc.dat”. If you want, you can go back to folder options and check the box again.

5 – Now select all “perfc” files, right-click on one of them, go to “Properties” and check the box “Read only”, then click “OK”

6 – Finally, copy all the “perfc” files to the Windows directory. (make sure you have administrator permission to do this.)

Bonus Hint: If you don’t know where your “Windows” directory is, do the following:

Press and hold the Windows key on your keyboard, then press the letter “R”, a “Run” box should show up. Type “%windir%” , press OK and voila! Your Windows directory should open.