India is the country most affected by the Petya ransomware attack in the Asia Pacific region, a study by security software firm Symantec said. In a blog, Symantec represented the countries most affected by Petya on a graph, which shows India ranking first in the Asia Pacific region and seventh globally.
Ukraine, the United States, Russia, France and the United Kingdom are the five countries most affected by the cyber attack. China is the second-worst affected country in the Asia Pacific, while Japan is third.
Some of the biggest corporations including Russia’s largest oil company Rosneft, Ukraine’s international airport, shipping firm AP Moller-Maersk, and advertising giant WPP fell prey to the Petya cyber attack, which comes just a month after the WannaCry ransomware attack that affected systems in over 100 countries.
Petya also affected India’s largest container port, Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust, on Wednesday, forcing it to shut operations in one of its three terminals. The terminal, operated by AP Moller-Maersk, was unable to conduct loading and unloading operations because of the breach, Union Shipping Ministry Spokesperson Neeta Prasad said.
Petya builds a list of IP addresses to spread to, including addresses on Local Area Networks as well as remote IPs, Symantec said. Once the list of target computers has been identified, Petya builds a list of user names and passwords it can use to spread to those targets.
The aim of the Petya malware is to delete all data, including data on the the disk where the information about the operating system is usually stored, The Indian Express reported. The idea is to cause massive destruction of data. But the hackers have no means of decrypting the data, said TechCrunch, and it is not being used to make financial gains.
The ransomware, which demands $300 per computer in cyrptocurrency to free the systems from the breach, used a tool known as “Eternal Blue”, experts believe. The same hacking tool was used during the WannaCry attack.
But local cyber-security firm Kaspersky Lab estimated the number of victims of the Petya malware at 2,000, NDTV said. This is much lower than the 2,00,000 estimate for WannaCry in May.
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