user: Jeb Bush staffers looking for new jobs: report

Updated: Saturday, February 20, 2016, 12:42 AM

Jeb Bush says he is the best man for the job held by his brother and father, but his poll numbers have some staff members hoping to have any job at all after this weekend.

Members of the former Florida governor’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination have begun looking for other work amid speculation that Bush could end his campaign after Saturday’s South Carolina primary, according to POLITICO.

“Staffers are floating résumés now. We’ve been contacted by several. People have gotta eat, you know?” Rubio supporter Randy Nielsen told the outlet.

A total of four political consultants reportedly said they were in contact with Bush employees about departures following the Palmetto State primary.

Bush’s campaign bristled at questions about the White House run’s future and released a schedule of events for Sunday and Monday in Nevada, which holds a GOP caucus on Tuesday.

After receiving less than 3% of the vote in the Iowa caucuses and placing fourth in New Hampshire, the candidate’s team has been hoping that he can repeat his brother’s 2000 success down south.

Once the candidate to beat in the GOP field because of a glut of early fundraising, Bush has receded into the background amid constant attacks front-runner Donald Trump.

His 10% support in South Carolina trails Trump’s 35%, Sen. Ted Cruz’s 19% and fellow Florida politician Marco Rubio’s 15%, according to an aggregation of polls published Thursday by CNN.

Rubio, who was Bush’s mentee before they both dived into the chaos of the election cycle, received the coveted endorsement of South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley this week.

Bush, who has brought family members including George W. Bush and his mother Barbara on the campaign trail, was believed to be courting the popular pol’s favor before she sided with the Florida senator.

Summary: Members of the former Florida governor’s campaign for president have begun looking for other work, POLITICO reported.


Q: Gwyneth Paltrow compares online attacks to surviving war: It's a 'bloody, dehumanizing thing'

Gwyneth Paltrow has a message for Internet trolls: Look inside yourself before attacking others.

The actress spoke out about online commenters in an interview with Re/code on Tuesday, in advance of a surprise appearance at the Code Conference, a two-day event of "top industry influencers in media and technology" taking place in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif.

Paltrow was invited to speak due to her popular online lifestyle brand GOOP—on which she famously announced that she and her husband Chris Martin were "consiously uncoupling."

She says that while the "Internet is an amazing opportunity, socially," it also means people can vent their negativity and take it out on others.

"It's culturally acceptable to be an anonymous commenter," she said. "It's culturally acceptable to say, 'I'm just going to take all of my internal pain and externalize it anonymously.'"

She also compared enduring the wrath of Internet commenters to surviving a war.

"You come across (online comments) about yourself and about your friends, and it's a very dehumanizing thing," the star said. "It's almost like how, in war, you go through this bloody, dehumanizing thing … My hope is, as we get out of it, we'll reach the next level of conscience."

The "Iron Man 3" star said the vitriol doesn't affect her, but noted that "it's taken a long time to get to (that) point."

"I see myself as a chalkboard or a whiteboard or a screen, and someone is just putting up their own projection on it," she said. "It has nothing to do with me."

A: Gwyneth Paltrow has a message for Internet trolls: Look inside before yourself before attacking others. The actress spoke out about online commenters in an interview with Re/code on Tuesday, in advance of a surprise appearance at a technology conference.


Problem: CryptoLocker effectively encrypts files, requires ransom

"It systematically hunts down every one of your personal files—documents, databases, spreadsheets, photos, videos and music collections—and encrypts them with military-grade encryption, and only the crooks can open it," said Chester Wisniewski, a senior security advisor at Sophos.

(Read more: What to do when managing someone else's money)

Your computer, even though it's infected, keeps working normally; you just can't access any of your personal files. It's scary, especially if you haven't backed up your data.

"Cybercrime is evolving as the bad guys get smarter and use newer technologies," said Michael Kaiser, executive director of the National Cyber Security Alliance. "They're always looking for new ways to steal your money."

CryptoLocker is different from other types of "ransomware" that have been around for many years and that freeze your computer and demand payment. Those can usually be removed, restoring your access to files and documents.

But CryptoLocker encrypts your files. There's only one decryption key, and the bad guys have that on their server. Unless you pay the ransom within three days, that key will be destroyed. And as the message from the extortionists says, "After that, nobody and never will be able to restore files. …"

(Read more: New security threat: Cash register skimmers)

The typical extortion payment is $300 or 300 euros paid by Green Dot MoneyPak, or for the more tech-savvy, two bitcoins, currently worth about $400.

To instill a sense of urgency, a digital clock on the screen counts down from 72 hours so you can see how much time is left before that unique decryption key is destroyed.

One victim described his anguish in an online post: "The virus cleverly targeted … all of our family photos, including all photos of my children growing up over the last 8 years. I have a distraught wife who blames me!"

This sophisticated malware is delivered the old-fashioned way: an executable file hidden inside an attachment that looks like an ordinary ZIP file or PDF. One small business reports being compromised after clicking on an email attachment that was designed to look like a shipping invoice from the U.S. Postal Service.

Open that file and bad things start to happen, although it may take several days for the ransom demand to appear on your screen after the machine is infected.

"The author ... is a genius. Evil genius, but genius none the less," an IT professional commented in an online tech forum. Another wrote, "This thing is nasty and has the potential to do enormous amounts of damage worldwide."

(Read more: Scammers target utility customers)

Good anti-virus software can remove CryptoLocker from your computer but cannot undo the damage—the encryption is that good.

"It's the same type of encryption used in the commercial sector that's approved by the federal government," Wisniewski told me. "If the crooks delete that encryption key, your files are gone forever. Even the NSA can't bring them back."

The cybercrooks are targeting both businesses and individual users—anyone who will pay to regain access to their files.

The CryptoLocker forum on BleepingComputer.com is filled with page after page of horror stories. Here is a small sample:

"When we discovered the infection from a user's workstation on the network, this program had encrypted over 180,000 files through the network shares in a period of 6 days. I pretty much shut down the business for 2 days after we realized what was happening."

"Our company was infected this morning. The virus hit a machine 4 days ago and today we got the pop up about the ransom. All files on the network drive the user had access to are now encrypted."

"We had a workstation get infected yesterday that encrypted everything on our network share drive. We had backups, although they weren't recent enough, so despite all feelings against it, we paid the ransom and everything started to decrypt overnight."

Write a one or two sentence summary.

Summary:

assistant: CryptoLocker has been actively infecting business and person computers worldwide, encrypting files and demanding payment to unlock them.