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This is a bad one. A couple of weeks ago my wife´s laptop was infected by Crypto Locker. She has a retail license of Avast on it and it didn´t recognize the virus. Crypto Locker came as a link in an email labeled as “Invoice”. The sender was a Swedish random name (we live in Sweden) from a Hotmail adress. Unluckily she was waiting for an invoice so she followed the link. Instantly most files were encrypted. Instructions like shanger2 describes was written all over the desktop and new instructions in perfect Swedish popped up when you tried to open a file. We took the laptop to a computer store and they examined it but couldn´t do anything. I googled on Crypto Locker and it seems quite hopeless to get your files back. The makers of the original virus were prosecuted in the US I think, but clones are apparently still circulating all over the world. The encryption keys are stored on the hackers computers. There might be a chance if you follow their instructions, but I don´t recommend it. It will cost you a lot of money and there´s no guarantee you´ll get your files back. Furthermore we don´t want to promote those villains, do we? Good thing was my wife had backed up her files about one month earlier and she was thinking of bying a new laptop anyway.
What disturbes me is that our pay version of Avast was of no use. Until now I have regarded Avast as a robust and easy-to-use application.

Leo Kramár