Just a month and a half ago, the WannaCry virus left thousands of companies and multinationals shaking around the world, but hackers do not rest . Again they have acted worldwide against governments, public bodies and private companies with a virus whose characteristics are debated by computer security experts. It appears that it is a ransomware similar to Wannacry , responsible for the cyberattack last May, and is based on a technology and a code called Eternal Blue that was stolen from the US National Security Agency and later leaked by the Shadow Brokers group. It affects Windows computers .
Some experts and the Ukrainian company Novaia Potchta, one of the main affected, claim that it is a variant of the Petya or Petrwrap virus . However, the laboratory of the Russian computer security giant Kaspersky claims that it is a new virus , never seen before; that’s why NotPetya has called it. Among those affected are some 80 large companies from various sectors in the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Russia, Spain, India, Italy and Ukraine . Among them are the food multinational Mondelez, which owns brands such as Oreo, Tang, Milka or Toblerone; the British advertising company WPP, Nivea, Auchan (Alcampo), the Merck Sharp & Dohme laboratory, the Russian oil company Rosneft, the National Bank of Ukraine, the computer systems of its airports and the Kiev metro. The virus appears to have originated in Russia and Ukraine, from where it is spreading to the rest of the world.
The Microsoft company has recognized that a flaw in its operating system, Windows, is what allows Petya to infect computers . At the moment it has made an update available to its users to solve the problem. According to early Microsoft analysis, ” the virus uses different techniques to spread , including one that has already been addressed by a security update made available to all systems from Windows XP to Windows 10, called MS17-010,” he told AFP a company spokesman.
After the Wannacry ransomware attacked hundreds of thousands of computers around the world in May, Microsoft recommended its users to use MS17-010. Microsoft continues to investigate and advises Windows users to be very cautious when opening unknown files, as ransomware generally uses emails to spread . According to cybersecurity company Cisco Talos, some of the infections may be linked to a compatibility software used in Ukraine called MeDoc. According to several affected companies, the virus caused a ransom demand of $ 300 to appear on the computer screen .
And it is that the so-called ramsomware are malicious programs that encrypt computer files and force their users to pay a sum of money , often in the form of virtual currency. According to the IT security company Group-IB, some 80 companies were attacked by this offensive in Russia and Ukraine. Among them, Rosneft and large Ukrainian banks, and also the American Mars or the French Auchan, as well as Ukrainian government structures.
