The Virus Taking Over Israel
A malicious virus infected dozens of Israeli companies, including sensitive institutions like financial companies and even a TV channel. It demands payment in exchange for unlocking the infected computers, but unlike its better known cousin CryptoLocker it doesn’t stop even after payment is made. How do you get infected, and how can people protect themselves?
A ransomware-type virus took over the computer system of one of Israel’s TV channels last week. The malicious program encrypted all of the system files, demanding a 400-euro ransom in order to unlock them. The virus apparently infiltrated the system through the computer used by the channel’s CEO. IT personnel eventually took care of the problem without any significant loss of data.
Another payment method offered by the hackers was an amount of bitcoins worth thousands of euros. According to estimation this is another attack in a series of incidents that hit dozens of Israeli companies over the last two weeks, in addition to 250,000 other users affected by similar viruses throughout the world.
How do you get infected by all this goodness? The virus spreads through e-mail messages containing links or attached files. Once a user clicks on a link or attachment the virus activates, downloading itself onto the computer and encrypting the files it finds. If the computer is connected to a network using shared directories, the virus will encrypt those also.
There’s no known way to release the infected files without paying the ransom, but apparently even that doesn’t always solve the problem – in fact, in the case of the Israeli virus, it probably won’t. One of the clients of the cyber security firm CyberHat did pay the ransom, yet their files remained locked. In other cases around the world paying did result in a release.
Read more on the website, please ..
A malicious virus infected dozens of Israeli companies, including sensitive institutions like financial companies and even a TV channel. It demands payment in exchange for unlocking the infected computers, but unlike its better known cousin CryptoLocker it doesn’t stop even after payment is made. How do you get infected, and how can people protect themselves?
Another payment method offered by the hackers was an amount of bitcoins worth thousands of euros. According to estimation this is another attack in a series of incidents that hit dozens of Israeli companies over the last two weeks, in addition to 250,000 other users affected by similar viruses throughout the world.
How do you get infected by all this goodness? The virus spreads through e-mail messages containing links or attached files. Once a user clicks on a link or attachment the virus activates, downloading itself onto the computer and encrypting the files it finds. If the computer is connected to a network using shared directories, the virus will encrypt those also.
There’s no known way to release the infected files without paying the ransom, but apparently even that doesn’t always solve the problem – in fact, in the case of the Israeli virus, it probably won’t. One of the clients of the cyber security firm CyberHat did pay the ransom, yet their files remained locked. In other cases around the world paying did result in a release.
Read more on the website, please ..
