The Latest Hacker Attack Demolished Data rather than Make Money

According to very specialized cyber security researchers, a malicious program which has been the focus of the current week's worldwide assault and which brought down networks within several nations wasn't a ransomware like initially thought, but certain kind of 'wiper' program which not only locks data by encrypting it but also makes it irretrievable.

The frightening disclosure indicates that the hacker attack, which hit USA, Europe, Germany, Italy, France and elsewhere starting June 26, was just pretending to be one ransomware assault while in reality tried to demolish specific data.

The assault, at first thought as from certain commercial malicious program namely Petya, seemed like one huge ransomware scheme. Gradually, it became lucid to experts that the assault intended to destroy rather than reap money, since ransom payments could not lead to the availability of the decryption code, whose function was to unlock impacted data files.

Moreover, thus far the assault has merely yielded slightly more than 3.99 Bitcoins that is approximately $10,300. In the meantime, the attack halted operations in prominent banks, airports as well as the radiation monitoring mechanism of the Chernobyl power plant. Over 60% of computers impacted with the alleged ransomware were spotted inside Ukraine. Techcrunch.com posted this on the Internet dated June 29, 2017.

According to security company Kaspersky, some 2,000 end-users have been victimized, with Ukrainian and Russian organizations impacted the most, while 'Maesk' the shipping company of Norway getting victimized as well. Kaspersky further substantiated that Shadow Brokers exposed EternalRomance and EternalBlue the two exploits of United States NSA (National Security Agency) that aided in automatically spreading the malicious program.

Notably, Petya creators' chief priority apparently was to fast spread the malware across organizations in Ukraine. Symantec Security Response Team's Gavin O'Gorman says Petya more effectively caused confusion and disruption to victims in Ukraine than make revenue.

Possibly, the ransomware factor was for deviating attention from any nation state being the attacker such as what happened with Shamoon malicious software during 2012. However, it is yet early to reach a conclusion about Petya, although sufficiently enough there's occurring a thickening of the plot.

» SPAMfighter News - 7/3/2017