Ransomware attack: Maharashtra police dept partially hit, ‘critical alert’ issued

The country’s cyber security agency has alerted Internet users against damaging activities of a strong and globally active ransomware virus- ‘Wannacry’- that critically infects work stations and locks them remotely.

In the evening, the Maharashtra Police department said it was partially hit by the ransomware.”Cyber experts have been engaged to fix the systems,” a senior police officer said. The red-coloured ‘critical alert’ was issued by the Computer Emergency Response Team of India (CERT-In), the nodal agency to combat hacking, phishing and to fortify security- related defences of the Indian Internet domain.

“It has been reported that a new ransomware named as Wannacry is spreading widely. Wannacry encrypts the files on infected Windows systems. This ransomware spreads by using a vulnerability in implementations of server message block (SMB) in Windows systems. “This exploit is named as ETERNALBLUE,” an advisory issued by the CERT-In, accessed by PTI, said.

It said the ransomware called ‘WannaCry’ or ‘WannaCrypt’ encrypts the computer’s hard disk drive and then spreads laterally between computers on the same local area network (LAN). “The ransomware also spreads through malicious attachments to emails,” it said. A huge extortion cyber attack had hit dozens of nations yesterday, holding computer data for ransom at hospitals, telecommunications …read more