A cyberattack similar to WannaCry entered its second day yesterday, hitting businesses, port operators and government systems across the globe, with companies struggling to retake control of their networks.
In Taiwan, the Executive Yuan’s Department of Cyber Security said that it has not received any reports of government computers being attacked by the ransomware that has ravaged mostly government and state enterprise computers in Europe and beyond.
AP Moller-Maersk A/S shut down systems across its operations to contain the cyberattack against its computer network, as it assesses the full impact.
BNP Paribas SA’s non-banking real estate unit was also hit, while a number of WPP PLC firms continue to be affected by the cyberattack, CEO Martin Sorrell and John Seifert, CEO of the ad giant’s Ogilvy & Mather unit, said in memo to staff.
Hamburg-based Beiersdorf AG, the maker of Nivea and Labello lip balm, said its central office and all worldwide sites were affected.
The cyberattack began in Ukraine on Tuesday, infecting computer networks and demanding US$300 in cryptocurrency to unlock their systems.
As of midday on Tuesday in North America, Kaspersky Lab analysts said about 2,000 users had been attacked, with organizations in Russia and Ukraine the most affected.
Kaspersky said its preliminary findings suggest that the latest attack involved a new malware, and is not a variant of Petya ransomware, as some reports indicated.
Kaspersky named it ExPetr, noting that “while it has several strings similar to Petya, it possesses entirely different functionality.”
The company said its telemetry data indicates about 2,000 attacked users so far. It added that organizations in Russia and Ukraine were the most affected, and hits were also registered in Poland, Italy, the UK, Germany, France, the US and several other countries.
The attacks had a limited impact in Asia. While there were early signs the virus was starting to spread in China, no large-scale outbreak was detected, Qihoo 360 Technology Co chief security engineer Zheng Wenbin said.
After the WannaCry outbreak earlier this year, ransomware is becoming a routine risk for businesses around the world. While banks and retailers have bolstered defenses against certain types of attacks, such as those targeting credit card data, many others are still catching up in building their defenses.
However, unlike traditional forms of ransomware, which often provide secure forms of payment in order to release control of networks, the new hack has seemingly concentrated on crippling systems, rather than obtaining a ransom. The e-mail address posted on users’ locked screens, used by victims to receive decryption keys, was easily and swiftly shut down by the e-mail provider.
“If it is a ransomware campaign to make money, it doesn’t add up,” said Raj Samani, chief scientist at McAfee, a cybersecurity company owned by Intel Corp.
He said there were many elements of the attack that made it look like the perpetrators did not actually care all that much about receiving payments.
Additional reporting by AP and CNA
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