Ransomware Recovery Plan

This is an original planning guide. It is not a vendor manual, an official standard, or legal advice. Example addresses use documentation ranges. Review every command before you paste it.

What this hour is for

A recovery plan names who decides, which copy cannot be changed by the same accounts that use the files, and the spare you would restore to. The template and the immutable-backup planner draft from answers you type. They do not connect, they do not decrypt anything, and they do not describe an intrusion.

Do not follow payment instructions from this page. Do not wipe the disks as the first step. Isolating a host is a decision with the person who leads the incident, not a command you paste while reading. This page does not recover a key and does not tell you how malware works.

The copy you would trust is one the everyday admin account cannot rewrite. If you do not have that copy, the plan says so. One service.

The change you can finish

Apply nothing while you are writing the note. When the lab window opens, it is one change on the host named in the ticket. Read the draft, then the host, then decide.

Rollback is the file, the package version, or the snapshot you saved first. You do not invent a rollback after the only copy is gone.

Name the service and the copy that cannot be rewritten by the everyday accounts.
Name who decides.
Name the spare restore target.
Do not include payment steps.
Do not wipe anything.
Stop.

Mistakes that outlive the command

Ransomware Recovery Plan goes wrong in a small set of ways. The list is here so the ticket can forbid them before the window.

Payment steps in the plan.
A wipe as the first action.
A decrypt procedure.
A description of how to break in.
The only copy deleted.
A host isolated with no one named to decide.

Decisions to write down

One decision for Ransomware Recovery Plan: The immutable copy is named, or marked missing. A person decides. The spare is named. No payment and no decrypt steps. Nothing was wiped. And this page does not explain an intrusion.

Checks before you call it done

Confirm this before you call the change done: The service is written. The copy is written or marked missing. The decision maker is written. No payment text is in the note. And nothing was wiped. If one of those fails, stop.

# Keep the copy the everyday accounts cannot rewrite.
# Do not follow a ransom note from this page.
# Do not wipe first.
# This page does not decrypt anything and does not describe an intrusion.

Before you leave the host

Ransomware Recovery Plan ends when the hostname in the prompt matches the hostname in the ticket. If it does not, you are on the wrong host. Stop. A command that succeeded on the wrong host is not progress.

The draft stays a draft until a person has read the names in it. A generator does not log into the host and does not know which disk is empty. You delete a line that names a host, a path, or an account you did not write down.

192.0.2.10/24, gateway 192.0.2.1, 198.51.100.0/24, 203.0.113.0/24, and 2001:db8::/32 are documentation. example.com is a documentation name. They belong in the note. They are not values you leave on a host because a draft included them.

prompt-for-this is a reminder that a secret is missing. It is not a password, a key, or a token you save in the ticket or in git. The real secret stays in the password store.

One change is the window. If two things move and the result is wrong, you will not know which one did it. The next change waits for its own page.

If the same step fails twice, stop for the day. The failure is the result. Adding a forum command beside a half-applied change produces a host nobody can rebuild. Restore the copy you took first.

A second person reads the hostname and the change aloud. If they cannot find them in the ticket, the note is not done. Silence is not agreement. Then leave the host alone.

This page is a planning guide. It is not a vendor manual, not an official standard, and not permission to touch a host you do not administer. You do not disable a firewall, AppArmor, or SELinux to make a check pass.

Tools for this guide

These tools run in the browser on this site. They do not log into your machines.

Backup & Recovery Guide

More in this cluster

The pillar for this page, and the next published pages filed with it.

Companion: Security: Incident Response Playbook.