On the backs of arguably the worlds largest cyberattack taking place a little over month ago, Wannacry, which wreaked havoc on over 300,000 Windows devices in 150 countries around the world, comes another, ‘Petya’, said to be very similar in nature.
The attack, coming in on Tuesday, affected numerous companies and customers alike in Europe, US and the Middle East as well, similarly locking users out of their Windows PC’s (great time to be a Mac User) and displaying a ransom note for 300$, requested in the form of Bitcoin. A Petya variant, the virus is said to makes it very difficult to restore information, locking the user out of the computers hard drive and individual files as well.
In addition to installing the staple anti-virus, Windows users have been urged to back up all their files onto an external hard drive and run the latest update on their PC’s.
While cyber security certainly isn’t a new concern, the seemingly increased aggresiveness by hackers as of late from the aforementioned attacks, the Zomato hacking and countless phishing scams have put governments, organizations and consumers on notice.
Taj El Khayat, director for the Gulf, Levant and North Africa Region at F5 Network, specialists in secure application delivery stated ”While the reported ranspom demands of 300$ to release the encrypted data seems low, this will scale up very quickely, the more concerning issue is how national infrastructure is being impacted.”
Vice President of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, recently launched a Cyber Security strategy aimed at making Dubai the digitally safest country in the world.