Alert in India as cyberattack infects systems worldwide

The Centre on Saturday issued a security alert to computer users, following a wave of cyberattacks that wreaked havoc across the globe. In India, about 100 computers of the Andhra Pradesh Police have been affected, according to the monitoring arm of the ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.

The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), a nodal agency under the ministry to deal with cyber security emergencies, said a new ransomware named Wannacry was spreading widely.

WannaCrypt encrypts files on infected Windows systems, and spreads by using a vulnerability in the Server Message Block (SMB) in Windows systems. This exploit is named Eternal-Blue, it said. The ransomware infects other computers on a network and spreads through malicious attachments to emails, according to the advisory.

“In order to prevent infection, users and organisations are advised to apply patches to Windows systems as mentioned in the Microsoft Security Bulletin MS17-010,” CERT-In said on Saturday.

On its website, it issued a list of dos and don’ts for the public, and recommended the installation of relevant ‘patches’ to protect against a data breach.

Security firms say users must immediately disconnect an infected device from the local network to contain the infection. Once infected, users are asked to pay 300 dollars in cryptocurrency Bitcoin to retrieve their files. “We held an assessment meeting today and have found that 102 systems of the Andhra Police have been infected with ransomware,” Gulshan Rai, director general, CERT-In, said.