Common people should not fear ransomware attack: Adv. Nevagi

Share this News:

·         The cyber security experts from the city spread awareness about the recent cyber attacks

Pune, May 17: Common people should not fear the Ransomware attack. It is affecting more to the big corporations and organisations such as banks, manufacturing and service industry than individuals. These organisations must start working on their cyber security immediately expressed Advocate Abhay Nevagi, noted High Court Lawyer and Cyber Law Expert. He was speaking at a press conference organised by ANA Cyber Forensic Private Limited to spread awareness about the ongoing Ransomware attack across the world. Bikram Chaudhuri, Partner, Dhanesh Rale, Partner and Chirayu Mahajan, a Cyber Forensic Expert from ANA Cyber Forensic Private Limited were also present during the conference. 

Adv. Nevagi explained the ramifications of the recent ransomware cyber-attack and presented the important precautions that could be taken from now on. Chirayu Mahajan also revealed technical information and performed a demonstration about the ransomware attack.

In support of his statement that the common man will be less affected, Nevagi further explained that some individuals might lose their person data on their computers but it will cause a lot of damage. “The services industry is the sector most affected by ransomware, accounting for 38 percent of reported infections in the last year. More than individuals the government and private organisations, nationalised, private and co-operative banks and manufacturing industries must act on their software and cyber security immediately,” added Nevagi.

He further said that it is safe for common people to use their ATM cards and machines and perform online transactions or use internet banking as the ransomware is not affecting them.

According to the statistics gathered through various sources it is estimated that over 200,000 systems were compromised worldwide on May 12. It has impacted over 10,000 Organisations from 150 countries. In India, enterprise Companies in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, and Chennai have been affected. Around 102 computer systems of Andhra Pradesh police were hacked.Till date over 25 variants of ransomware families have been identified and since January 2016 over 4000 ransomware attacks happened on the daily basis. 

Mahajan who is a cyber forensic expert explained the technical details of the ransomware. He explained that from May 12, the malicious software named ‘WannaCry’ has started affecting the systems. It spreads through malicious links from any website or by downloading files sent from unknown sources. This attack also gives the user warnings to pay the ransom or all their data will be corrupted. This is how mostly the ransom money has been received by the hackers. The hackers give their victims 72 hours to pay the $300 in bitcoin; after that, the price doubles. But paying the money also does not guarantee the recovery or safety of data. The payment has been asked in bitcoins because it is a virtual currency and users can receive money by creating pseudonyms.  

“Any ransomware exploits a security loophole in the windows operating system which is not updated or not authentic. Once it affects one computer, it spreads like a virus to all the computers connected with the same LAN resulting in complete loss of data and in many case financial losses,” he said. 

He further informed that it has affected those who use windows XP, Vista, and server 2003. Recognising such attacks, Microsoft on March 14, 2017 had released software patches to fix the loopholes but many have not updated their systems or downloaded these patches to secure their data.

In India, about 70 percent of the 2.25 lakh ATMs run on Windows XP, an operating software. The ATM machines are running on Windows XP software and are extremely vulnerable to the cyber-attack as Microsoft has stopped providing support for this OS on April 8, 2014.

“We can deal with the ransomware issue by taking precautions such as using updated and authentic OS and anti-virus. Taking measures to implement cyber security and regular backups can help individuals and organisations to combat this cyber-attack. It is necessary for all of us to beware of phishing and suspicious activities,” he concluded.