1. As Steamtyme said, the only reason you need a computer is to configure the miner with your pool details. You don't even really need a computer to do this and could be done from a mobile phone.

2. You can't mine 2 different coins at the same time from 1 ASIC even if they are the same algorithm because the blockchains are different and data from each block is included in the next block. (A solution that is valid in bitcoin won't be valid in bitcoin cash because the transaction history is different.)

3. Presumably your talking about for running wallets/full nodes, you can easily run multiple on the one PC, they run on different ports. I would probably run 1 PC and install the full wallet for every coin you are going to mine.

Even with 10 S9's it is highly unlikely to find a block solo mining bitcoin. So you could set some miners to solo mine some altcoins directly to the wallets on the PC and set some of your miners to mine to a bitcoin pool. You should still run a bitcoin node though and have the pool payout to your wallet.

I'm pretty sure that miners continually redefine the block that they are working on to include more transactions as they are received/prioritized by the node.

In defense of paying the ransom, I was acting on behalf of a customer that requested we purchase the bitcoin and pay the ransom in the hope that he would get his files back after exhausting all other options I could think of.

Some people value their files at over $1000. If I kidnapped your child and asked for a $1000 ransom to release your child would you pay the ransom if their were no other options? Even if there was a chance that I didn't give your child back? I know this is a stupid analogy but so is the car theft analogy, point is ransoms are a fact of life even if I don't assist with the payment of them.

The customer has learnt his lesson in that he will be more careful with opening email attachments and will have a proper backup in place. I however have not learnt my lesson in that I will assist a future customer pay a ransom if that is what they request.

Trying to run the decryption tool from command line generates the same "not valid win32 application" error. I believe it is a new strain based on TorrentLocker, apparently called Crypt0l0cker with 0's not o's. The extension of the encrypted files is .enc

I reckon the decryption software would work if the computer that got infected was running Windows 7 instead of XP.

We have been able to successfully decrypt files that have been hit by the crypolocker infection before by paying the ransom. The hackers themselves have an incentive to follow through with their side of the deal as it would become known that there is no point paying the ransom if they didn't provide decryption software. I have searched for decryption software however none of the programs available will work with the type of Cryptolocker they got hit with.

Perhaps you can point me in the direction of a security company?

Hi,

I'm hoping somebody can point me in the right direction. A customer of mine was hit with the Crypt0l0cker infection and had all their files encrypted.

They have paid the ransom and received a file called decryption_software.exe however when they attempt to run the program on their Windows XP PC they get an error stating "not a valid win32 application". I tried running the software on a different computer running Windows XP and got the same message so presumably the file has only been written for 64 bit Windows.

I copied the customers files to a computer running 64 bit Windows 10 and ran the software which runs the decryption software however does not decrypt the files. I have heard that the decryption software generally needs to be run from the computer that got infected.

I was wondering if it is possible to analyze the .exe file and have it adjusted or rewritten to work on Windows XP. Or possibly I can extract the encryption key from the .exe and use a different program to decrypt the files.

Any ideas would be appreciated.