Worldwide 150 countries including Russia
and US have been hit by the WannaCry ransomware attack. India ranks third in the list of
countries that are bearing the loss of data due to the ransomware attack. According
to, the latest reports more than 40,000 computers have been hacked. However,
the public and private banks have not gotten into this vicious hold so far.
People who are still wondering what
ransomware is? It is a kind of a malicious
software or a harmful software in the laymen term. It encrypts the files and locks devices such
as computer, tablet and smartphones and then demands a ransom in bitcoins (digital
currency) to give you back your data. WannaCry is one of the ransomware software, that is also known
as WannaCrypt, Wanna Decryptor, WanaCrypt0r
2.0. It generally targets computers running the Microsoft Windows operating
system.
Ransomware Attack in India
As mentioned, India has been severely
affected by the ransomware cyber-attack.
"In our research, we found that a large percentage of attacks globally by
WannaCry happened in India and the country was third on the total number of
attacks," said Altaf Halde, Managing Director, Kaspersky Lab, South Asia.
"Most of the Indian organizations are
still vulnerable to the attacks since the sophistication of these cyber threats
is going up and many of Indian organizations including private and public
sector still use outdated operating systems which make it easy for the cyber
attackers to compromise the systems." He further stated.
Quick Heal Technologies Ltd, the maker of
antivirus software, have detected over 48,000 ransomware attack attempts in India, with West Bengal topping the
charts. Most of the users in India use Microsoft XP, which is quite vulnerable
to ransomware. Since major chunk of the system that have been hacked belongs to
Microsoft XP.
The top five cities impacted by the
ransomware attack are Kolkata followed by Delhi, Bhubaneswar, Pune and Mumbai,
while the top five states with maximum detections of WannaCry virus are West
Bengal, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Delhi NCR, and Odisha.
18
computers of Andhra Pradesh Police and five other cases one of them in Kerala
where some of the panchayat computers were affected recently. The latest to
fall in this list is, leading online restaurant guide i.e. Zomato. About 17
million user records from its database have been hacked. The stolen data
includes user email address and hashed password.
Tips to Prevent Ransomware - Cyber Attack
- Data backup should be kept offline from time to time on a regular basis. Plus, Sync mirror backup.
- Government organizations, as well as individuals, should apply latest patches to Windows OS. These patches are released by Windows to kill virus time to time. All Microsoft systems should be updated constantly.
- Unauthorized emails, links, and pop-ups shouldn't be accessed as it can contain malware.
- Install an antivirus in your device.
Source:Techjockey
Comments
Post a Comment