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A massive hack has struck across Europe, causing disruptive mayhem, and posing serious security breach, especially to the Ukrainian government, with a global implication for users of Windows PCs that are not up to date.
Ukrainian companies and government officials reported major disruption to power grid, banks and government offices.
Russia’s Rosneft energy company also reported falling victim to hacking, as did shipping company A.P. Moller-Maersk, which said every branch of its business was affected.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Pavlo Rozenko Today posted a picture of a darkened computer screen to Twitter, saying that the computer system at the government’s headquarters has been shut down.
Та-дам! Секретаріат КМУ по ходу теж "обвалили". Мережа лежить. pic.twitter.com/B74jMsT0qs
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— Rozenko Pavlo (@RozenkoPavlo) June 27, 2017
The message on the tweet reads: “And the Dame! Secretariat of the CABINET of MINISTERS in the course of too “was devalued. The network of lies,” according to Twitter translation algorithm.
A Tom Guide’s report later confirmed the attack to be a variant of the Petya/Mischa/Petrwrap/GoldenEye ransomware family.
Ransomwares like WannaCry hold data hostage by scrambling it until a payment is made.
And according to the Tom Guide’s report, the Petya ransomware is using both the ETERNALBLUE networking exploit developed by the NSA (and used by WannaCry) and a Microsoft Office/WordPad flaw discovered earlier this year.
The prevailing theory is that Office files were being spread by phishing emails, and once they are opened, the malware used ETERNALBLUE to spread across a corporate network.
Petya ransomware is especially damaging, as it encrypts not only certain user files, but also the computer’s file table and Master Boot Record.
The victim will not be able to restart his or her computer.
The ransomware note asked victims to pay $300 in bitcoin to a specific Bitcoin address.
The report stated that Windows computers that have installed both the March 2017 and April 2017 security-patch bundles should be immune to the ransomware worm.
“If you haven’t updated Windows recently, do so immediately. April and May’s patch bundles will be installed along with June’s,” the report stated.