The encryption was never broken. Claude rebuilt most of my files from the parts the ransomware didn’t touch, and guessed the parts it did.
The day my file names started to change
In 2017 I renovated my apartment. For the renovation I modelled the whole place in Google SketchUp, with the furniture, the kitchen and the bathroom.
In 2019 I was sitting at my computer when the names of the files in an open folder started to change in front of me. Normal names turned into random letters. I pulled the plug.
It was ransomware, most likely an automated attack through Windows Remote Desktop (RDP). By then it had encrypted a lot of files on the system disk. Most of them I didn’t need, so I only copied off what I wanted to keep from my Desktop, Pictures and Documents folders: about 700 encrypted files.
I didn’t pay, and I didn’t delete them. I kept them for seven years, hoping that one day computers would be smart enough to open them.
Now I gave them to Claude.