Tag Archives: NotPetya

Europol: Ransomware is far and away criminals’ favorite attack method

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For police tracking the cybercrime horse race, it’s clear that ransomware is pulling away. While security incidents of all types continue at breakneck pace, a new report from the European Union’s law enforcement organization Europol pointed to ransomware as one of the easiest, most effective and common threats seen across the world. “Ransomware has eclipsed most other cyberthreats with global campaigns indiscriminately affecting victims across multiple industries in both the public and private sectors,” Europol’s researchers wrote in the newly published 2017 Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment (IOCTA). “Some attacks have targeted and affected critical national infrastructures at levels that could endanger lives. These attacks have highlighted how connectivity, poor digital hygiene standards and security practices can allow such a threat to quickly spread and expand the attack vector.” The IOCTA, designed to provide guidance and recommendations to law enforcement and governments across the continent, tracked ransomware attacks in the last year and […]

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FedEx attributes $300 million loss to NotPetya ransomware attack

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FedEx reported an estimated $300 million loss in its first quarter earnings report Tuesday, attributing the loss mostly to a computer virus that impacted the company’s operations across Europe in July. The package delivery company’s Dutch subsidiary, TNT Express, was infected with the NotPetya ransomware virus in late June. NotPetya hit companies in Ukraine in late June and soon spread to other countries. Much of TNT Express’s operations are based in Ukraine. The attack froze users’ computers, encrypted their files and demanded a ransom of $300 in Bitcoin to regain access.  Cybersecurity researchers found, however, that regardless of whether a victim paid the ransom for NotPetya, data on infected computers may be deleted. The earnings report released Tuesday by FedEx notes that most of TNT’s services resumed after the attack and “substantially all” its critical operational systems are back up and running, but volume, revenue and profits were  negatively impacted. […]

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Windows Search Bug Worth Watching, and Squashing

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Patches are available—and should be applied—that address a critical vulnerability in Windows Search that some are calling the next WannaCry. Others aren’t so ready to do that. Continue reading Windows Search Bug Worth Watching, and Squashing→

Motivation roulette: Is pseudo-ransomware a term?

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It used to be so simple. Attack campaigns were relatively simple to determine, for example when we detailed the recent Shamoon campaign it was clear that this was intended to disrupt the victim. In this case the target was clearly Saudi Arabia, and the use of a wiper component indicated the objective of the perpetrators of the attack. Equally the use of ransomware was just as clear, its use was intended to get paid. What … More → Continue reading Motivation roulette: Is pseudo-ransomware a term?→

New tool can help prevent government-mandated backdoors in software, Swiss researchers say

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A new framework from a lab in Switzerland could help prevent malware like Petya from spreading, but would also make it difficult — if not impossible — for governments to force software companies to deliver backdoored software updates in secret. The Petya ransomware, and its wiperware variant NotPetya, spread on the wings of a software update unwittingly issued by Ukrainian accounting software company M.E. Doc. An attacker, who many believe to be agents of the Russian government, owned M.E. Doc’s network and injected malicious code into a legitimate software update. This new proof-of-concept technology, dubbed “Chainiac” by the Decentralized/Distributed Systems (DEDIS) lab at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), offers a decentralized framework that eliminates such single points of failure and enforces transparency, making it possible for security analysts to continuously review updates for potential vulnerabilities. “What Chainiac is trying to do,” Bryan Ford, leader of the group that […]

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