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TECHNOLOGY Wednesday 28 June 2017

New cyberattack wallops Europe; spreads more slowly in US

By RAPHAEL SATTER and software to a contagious
FRANK BAJAK disease. “It’s like somebody
Associated Press sneezing into a train full of
PARIS (AP) — A new and people,” he said.
highly virulent outbreak Ryan Kalember, a security
of data-scrambling soft- expert at Proofpoint, said
ware — apparently sown one reason the attacks ap-
in Ukraine — caused dis- peared to be slowing down
ruption across the world was that the ransomware
Tuesday. Following a simi- appears to spread only
lar attack in May , the fresh when a direct contact ex-
cyber-assault paralyzed ists between two networks
some hospitals, govern- — such as when a global
ment offices and major company’s Ukraine office
multinational corporations interacts with headquar-
in a dramatic demonstra- ters.
tion of how easily malicious But once it hits a computer
programs can bring daily on a network, it spreads
life to a halt. quickly, even among com-
Ukraine and Russia ap- puters that have applied
peared hardest hit by the the fix for the NSA exploit.
new strain of ransomware “It’s more harmful to the
— malicious software that organization that it affects,
locks up computer files but because it’s not ran-
with all-but-unbreakable domly spreading over the
encryption and then de- A computer screen cyberattack warning notice reportedly holding computer files to ransom, as internet like WannaCry, it’s
mands a ransom for its re- part of a massive international cyberattack, at an office in Kiev, Ukraine, Tuesday June 27, 2017. somewhat contained to
lease. In the United States, Associated Press the organizations that were
the malware affected first emerged early after- Ukraine bore the brunt with somware, dubbed Wanna- connected to each other,”
companies such as the noon local time Tuesday. more than 60 percent of Cry . Both spread using digi- Kalember said.
drugmaker Merck and In Ukraine, victims included the attacks, followed by tal lock picks originally cre- Botezatu said the new pro-
Mondelez International, the top-level government of- Russia with more than 30 ated by the NSA and later gram appeared nearly
owner of food brands such fices, where officials posted percent, according to ini- published to the web by a identical to GoldenEye, a
as Oreo and Nabisco. photos of darkened com- tial findings by researchers still-mysterious group known variant of a known fam-
Its pace appeared to slow puter screens, as well as at the cybersecurity firm as the Shadowbrokers. ily of hostage-taking pro-
as the day wore on, in part energy companies, banks, Kaspersky Lab. It listed Po- Security vendors including grams known as “Petya.” It
because the malware ap- cash machines, gas sta- land, Italy and Germany, Bitdefender and Kaspersky demanded $300 in Bitcoin.
peared to require direct tions, and supermarkets. in that order, as the next- said the NSA exploit, known Unlike typical ransomware,
contact between comput- Ukrainian Railways and the worst affected. as EternalBlue, lets malware which merely scrambles
er networks, a factor that communications company In the U.S, two hospitals in spread rapidly across inter- personal data files, the
may have limited its spread Ukrtelecom were among western Pennsylvania were nal networks at companies program wreaking havoc
in regions with fewer con- major enterprises hit, Infra- hit; patients reported on and other large organiza- Tuesday overwrites a com-
nections to Ukraine. structure Minister Volody- social media that some sur- tions. Microsoft issued a se- puter’s master boot record,
The malware’s origins re- myr Omelyan said in a geries had to be resched- curity fix in March, but Chris making it tougher to restore
main unclear. Researchers Facebook post . uled. A spokeswoman for Wysopal, chief technology even a machine that has
picking the program apart The virus hit the radiation- Heritage Valley Health Sys- officer at the security firm been backed up, said Ka-
found evidence its creators monitoring at Ukraine’s tem would say only that Veracode, said it would lember.
had borrowed from leaked shuttered Chernobyl power operational changes had only be effective if every It may have first spread
National Security Agency plant, site of the world’s to be made. A Wellsville, single computer on a net- through a rogue update
code, raising the possibility worst nuclear accident, Ohio, woman at one of its work were patched — oth- to a piece of Ukrainian ac-
that the digital havoc had forcing it into manual op- hospitals to have her gall- erwise, a single infected counting software called
spread using U.S. taxpayer- eration. bladder removed said she machine could infect all MEDoc, according to
funded tools. Multinational companies, noticed computer moni- others. “Once activated, tweets by the country’s
“The virus is spreading all including the global law tors off and nurses scurry- the virus can automatically cyberpolice unit. It said a
over Europe and I’m afraid firm DLA Piper and Danish ing around with stacks of and freely distribute itself rogue update seeded the
it can harm the whole shipping giant A.P. Moller- paperwork. Security ex- on your network,” Ukraine’s infection across Ukraine. In
world,” said Victor Zhora, Maersk were also affected, perts said Tuesday’s global cyberpolice tweeted. a lengthy statement post-
the chief executive of Info- although the firms didn’t cyberattack shares some- Bogdan Botezatu, an ana- ed to Facebook, MEDoc
safe IT in Kiev, where reports specify the extent of the thing in common with last lyst with Bitdefender, com- acknowledged having
of the malicious software damage. month’s outbreak of ran- pared such self-spreading been hacked.q