In a matter of months, multiple cyber attacks have crippled leading countries worldwide bringing operations to a standstill. The latest such ransomware named Petya, infected computers all over the world and shut down computers at an alarming rate.
Initially called Petya, the ransomware was later identified as GoldenEye by security firm Bitdefender. This latest cyber attack, like WannaCry, infected more than 300,000 computers on Tuesday by encrypting not only the files but the hard drive as well. GoldenEye has two layers that lock up the files and the computers file system by rebooting as soon as it finishes encrypting files. The ransom demands can be seen as soon as a computer is infected.
The hackers behind this latest ransomware were asking for a $300 bitcoin payment for the victims to gain back access. According to researchers at Recorded Future, it also has a hidden Trojan virus that steals the victim’s username and passwords.
Airports, hospitals, national banks and ministry offices were shut down in Ukraine which was the biggest victim of the attack. Russia, Denmark, United States, United Kingdom, France and India were also affected by this ransomware.
Many cyber security researchers said the virus uses an exploit known as EternalBlue, developed by the National Securit Agency (NSA,) of the United States over 5 years ago. This exploit along with other NSA secrets was disclosed by a group called Shadow Brokers in April.
India’s largest port in Mumbai, Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust shut down all operations in one of its three terminals. According to cyber security firm Kaspersky Lab, Russia and Ukraine were the worst hit with Government agencies, financial firms, banks and a power distributor being affected.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman called the attack “unprecedented,” and the official Ukrainian Twitter account also sent a tweet regarding the growing ransomware attack.
In America, A.P. Moller-Maersk, the world’s largest shipping company said it was also a victim of the attack across multiple sites and business units. Since its initial attack on Tuesday, more than $4,600 has been paid to the hackers bitcoin wallet in 19 payments. But the people behind this ransomware attacks are yet to be found.
