Cyber attack on 99 countries Russia and Britain most affected

Washington : A Ransomware cyber attack, the largest in the history so far, threatening to destroy data in case of non-payment of ransom has hit 99 countries, affecting more than 75,000 computers worldwide. Russia and Britain were most affected and news of India too have been affected have emerged. Apparently it has been stated that the cyber terrorists have used the US National Security Agency’s (NSA) code “ETERNAL BLUE” as a Cyber Weapon for these attacks. The cyber attackers have demanded ransom of $300 to $600 per affected computer to be paid in bitcoins.

The attack is seen by the world as a form of “CYBER TERROR” a.k.a. cyber terrorism. In about 99 countries, the ‘RANSOMWARE’ virus has infiltrated computers of government agencies and multinational companies. Cyber extortionists tricked victims into opening malicious malware attachments through spam emails thereby gaining unauthorized access into the systems and blocking all the information on them. Atleast now, it seems impossible to relocate the lost data, due to this cyber attack. The cyber extortionists have warned and demanded a ransom of $300 to $600 to be paid within the next 3 days or all the data would be erased. The attacks have spread to almost 99 countries including Russia, Britain, Germany, China, Spain, Portugal and INDIA as well, out of which Russia and Britain were most affected. These cyber attacks forced Britain’s public health system to send patients away, freezing Russia’s Interior Ministry systems and wreaking havoc on other Russian companies as well.

2 Russian cyber security firms have strongly doubted that out of the 99 countries,70 countries that were attacked, the malware was made available through a dump by a group called ‘Shadow Brokers’, but the hackers have not yet come forward to claim responsibility. Cyber extortionists have used the code “ETERNAL BLUE” designed by US “National Security Agency” and meant to gather all information from the computers used by terrorists and enemy countries in this cyber attack. ‘Using this code it became extremely easy for ransomware virus to infiltrate computers that were using Windows operating system.

In India some computers have been affected by this cyber attack, however no details have been released yet.