Cyberattack reaches Asia, new targets hit by ransomware

New ransomware attack similar to WannaCry reaches Asia overnight spreading from Europe to US overnight, hitting businesses, port operators and government systems.

MALWARE & GLOBAL CYBERATTACKS

Cyberattack reaches Asia, new targets hit by ransomware

28/06/2017
Bloomberg News agency

A new ransomware attack similar to WannaCry has reached Asia after spreading from Europe to the US overnight, hitting businesses, port operators and government systems.

RANSOM OF US$300 IN DIGITAL CURRENCY PER COMPUTER

The attack is being carried out by the Petya virus, with users being told to pay US$300 in cryptocurrency (digital currency) per infected computer to unlock their systems.

The spread of the attack into Asia underscores how ransomware is becoming a routine risk of doing business around the world.

While banks and retailers have strengthened defences against certain types of attacks, such as those targeting credit card data, many others are still catching up in guarding against ransomware.

This week's strikes follow the recent global ransomware assault involving the WannaCry virus that affected hundreds of thousands of computers in more than 150 countries (see previous article here).

Using the virus as a weapon, extortionists demanded bitcoin from victims.

RANSOMWARE ATTACKS SOARING

Ransomware attacks have been soaring and the number of such incidents increased by 50% in 2016.

The new virus, called Petya, uses an exploit called EternalBlue to spread, much like WannaCry.

EternalBlue works on vulnerabilities in Microsoft Corp.’s Windows operating system. The new virus has a fake Microsoft digital signature appended to it and the attack is spreading to many countries.

RANSOMWARE TAKES OUT PORT IN INDIA

A port facility near Mumbai which is India’s biggest container port, was unable to load or unload because of the attack.

The facility, called Gateway Terminal India, could no longer identify which shipment belonged to whom.

GLOBAL ATTACK

The hack quickly spread from Russia and the Ukraine, through Europe and into the US.

About 2,000 users had been attacked as of midday Tuesday in North America (Wednesday morning in Thailand).

Organisations in Russia and the Ukraine the most affected.

There were signs the virus was starting to spread in China but no large-scale outbreak had been detected.

RUSSIA & UKRAINE HIT HARD

The attack popped up in government systems in Kiev, then disabled operations at companies including  the Chernobyl nuclear facility.

More than 80 companies in Russia and Ukraine were initially affected.

Kremlin-controlled Rosneft, Russia’s largest crude producer, said it avoided “serious consequences” from the “hacker attack” by switching to a backup system for managing production processes.

The attack had hit Ukraine particularly hard and the intrusion was “the biggest in Ukraine’s history”, Anton Gerashchenko, an aide to the Interior Ministry, wrote on Facebook.

Kyivenergo, a Ukrainian utility, switched off all computers after the hack, while another power company, Ukrenergo, was also affected, the Interfax news service reported.

UK MEDIA COMPANY HIT HARD: TURNED OFF COMPUTERS, BANNED WI-FI

UK media company WPP’s website was down and employees had been told to turn off their computers and not use wi-fi, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Sea Containers, the London building that houses WPP and ad agencies including Ogilvy & Mather, had been shut down, another person said.

“IT systems in several WPP companies have been affected,” the company said in an emailed statement.

Law firm DLA Piper took down its systems as a precautionary measure as it dealt with the attack, meaning clients could not contact its team by email or land-line, according to a notice on its website

The most vulnerable places are “where the operators are a lot of the times at the mercy of manufacturers and providers of those technologies and there’s a long time between existence of a fix and implementation of a fix,” Mr Woods said.

APM Terminals, owned by Maersk, was experiencing system issues at multiple terminals, including the Port of New York and New Jersey, the largest port on the US East Coast, and Rotterdam in The Netherlands, Europe’s largest harbour.

APM Terminals at the Port of New York and New Jersey would be closed for the rest of the day “due to the extent of the system impact,” the Port said.

Cie de Saint-Gobain, a French manufacturer, said its systems had also been infected, though a spokeswoman declined to elaborate.

Mondelez International Inc said it was also experiencing a global IT outage and was looking into the cause. Merck & Co Inc, based in Kenilworth, New Jersey, reported that its computer network was compromised due to the hack.

http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/security/1277138/cyberattack-reaches-asia-new-targets-hit-by-ransomware

http://www.bangkokpost.com/learning/advanced/1249969/how-to-fight-ransomware-dont-be-a-victim

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