Massive cyberattack hits Europe

Massive cyberattack hits Europe with widespread ransom demands


MOSCOW — A new wave of powerful cyberattacks hit Europe on Tuesday in a possible reprise of a widespread ransomware assault in May that affected 150 countries, as Ukraine reported ransom demands targeting the government and key infrastructure, and the Danish Maersk conglomerate said many of its systems were down.

Reports of attacks spread quickly on Tuesday afternoon. The Russian oil giant Rosneft and a subsidiary, Bashneft, were also hit, as was the British advertising and marketing multinational WPP. Norway’s National Security Authority said an “international company” there was affected, and Martijn Pols, a spokesman for the Port of Rotterdam, said one shipping company, APM Terminals, was targeted.

The virus even hit systems monitoring radiation at the site of the former Chernobyl nuclear power plant, where computers running Windows were temporarily knocked offline. By late Tuesday morning, reports of cyberattacks had spread as far as India and the United States.

But the damage was worst in Ukraine, which first reported Tuesday’s cyberattacks, saying they targeted government ministries, banks, utilities and other important infrastructure and companies nationwide, demanding ransoms from government employees in the cryptocurrency bitcoin.

[color=rgb(17, 17, 17)]The hack’s scale and the use of ransomware quickly recalled the massive May cyberattack in which hackers likely linked to North Korea disabled computers in more than 150 nations using a flaw that was once incorporated by the National Security Agency’s surveillance tool kit. That attack used the vulnerability to install ransomware called WannaCry.[/color]
[/color][color=rgb(17, 17, 17)]Tuesday’s attacks used a different form of ransomware similar to a virus known as Petrwrap or Petya, according to Costin Raiu, director of Global Research and Analysis Team at Kaspersky Lab.[/color]
[/color][color=rgb(17, 17, 17)]By midafternoon, breaches had been reported at computers governing the municipal energy company and airport in Ukraine’s capital, Kiev, the state telecommunications company Ukrtelecom, the Ukrainian postal service and the State Savings Bank of Ukraine. Payment systems at grocery stores were knocked offline, as well as the turnstile system in the Kiev metro. [/color]
[/color][color=rgb(17, 17, 17)]Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Pavlo Rozenko on Tuesday tweeted a picture of a computer screen warning in English that “one of your disks contains errors,” then adding in all capital letters: “DO NOT TURN OFF YOUR PC! IF YOU ABORT THIS PROCESS, YOU COULD DESTROY ALL YOUR DATA!”[/color]

Hilary e-mail hackers !