Ransomware attack puts AP on high alert

Vijayawada: The “ransomware” attack spread to India, with many computer systems of the Andhra Pradesh police being infected. The global wave of cyberattacks has affected over 45,000 computers in at least 74 countries since Friday evening.

The incident is being described as the biggest cyber ransom attack in the world. The ransomware virus, which has struck Russian banks, British hospitals and French carmakers, infects computer files and demands anywhere between $300- $600 bitcoins to unblock them.

Hackers intruded into the police network and locked computers with an encryption program at various police stations in four districts. As many as 102 computers across 18 police units were infected with the malware in Chittoor, Tirupati, Vizianagaram and Visakhap-atnam.

Director General of Police (DGP) N. Sambasivarao said the effect of the attack on the police department was minimal and that all vital data was safe. He said they had received an alert from Central agencies about the malware on Friday evening itself. An alert was immediately issued to all po-lice stations to disconnect the systems from internet. He said infected systems were quarantined from the network and cyber experts were working to retrieve data from them. “We are closely monitoring the situation. The police data was backed up,” he said, adding that the CCTNS data and police recruitment data was not affected. Meanwhile, the entire police department has been put on alert and all systems are being updated.

Microsoft had released a patch file to fix the security vulnerability on March 14 and those who had installed updates were safe. However, systems running older versions of Win-dows to which Microsoft has stopped security updates were at risk. Keeping this in view, the entire police department was advised to go offline and install the patch file. Systems with older versions were being backed up.

Vijayawada Police Commissioner D. Goutam Sawang said the recent technological initiatives like 4th Lion, e-Challan and passport servers were safe as they were running on Linux operating system. “There have been no reports of malware infection in Vijayawada from the department or from civilians,” he said.