Cyberattacks threaten us all

Computer systems from Ukraine to the US and India too were hit Tuesday-Wednesday in a second cyberattack, similar to the WannaCry assault that crippled machines worldwide in May. Ransomware known as Petwrap was the culprit that hit systems, including at container giant Maersk Group, which operates Gateway Terminals India at Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust. India is more vulnerable as not all systems and antivirus programmes are licensed and they may be compromised more easily by stray or planned attacks, which are only going to increase in future. Now cybercriminals have found a way to monetise their attacks, today’s connected world is in greater peril. A possible solution is to act with alacrity on every patch put out by tech giants like Microsoft and security firms, but then most computer users are notoriously lax about security.

The intriguing aspect of these widespread attacks is that the attackers used the same US National Security Agency hacking tool called Eternal Blue. This raises questions on whether the NSA can help defuse the situation, by letting everyone know how to handle the hacking tools it may have unleashed, perhaps unwittingly, to the cybercriminals. The NSA may not be able to acknowledge the role its shadowy operations played, with the world held to Bitcom ransom. But the least it can do is to direct major players in the right direction to overcome the distress caused by the cyberattacks. How perilous these attacks are getting was made obvious by nuclear power stations switching to manual monitoring of radiation levels. These attacks endanger us all.