What you need to know about Petya, the latest Cyberattack

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Another hack has impacted the business world. Named, Petya, this attack exploited holes the WannaCry attack highlighted. Since WannaCry was defeated so quickly, many firms did not patch the vulnerability.

The Petya attack started in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, when the ATMs stopped working. Workers at the old Chernobyl nuclear plant were forced to manually monitor radiation levels after their computers failed.1 Shipping giant Maersk had to shut down several systems once it realized it was affected. According to the company, “The breakdown affected all business units at Maersk, including container shipping, port and tug boat operations, oil and gas production, drilling services, and oil tankers.”2 Roughly 76 ports, including Los Angeles, were affected. The Port of New York & New Jersey released a tweet announcing its APM terminals were closed Tuesday afternoon. It is estimated that this attack compromised over 2,000 computers in a dozen countries including the UK, US, France, Germany, and Australia.

What lessons can we learn from this?

  • Never pay the ransom. You are dealing with criminals and cannot trust that they will give you the codes needed to unlock your data. Furthermore, it encourages them to continue hacking computers as they are compensated for it.
  • Backups are important. Instead of relying on a criminal to obtain your locked files, restore them from a backup.
  • Patches are key. The reason many of the machines became compromised is that they were missing important patches. Make sure you are regularly updating your machines to ensure loopholes are shut and your infrastructure is protected.

If you’re ready to protect your organization, it pays to work with a Managed IT Services/Managed Cloud Services company, like Bryley Systems, to ensure that you’re taking the right steps. Bryley will recommend solutions to eliminate weak links in your security chain, and help you develop an organization-wide policy to help prevent data loss.

Please contact us at 978.562.6077 or by email at ITExperts@Bryley.com. We’re here to help.

 

1 Perlroth, Nicole, Mark Scott, & Sheera Frenkel. New York Times. “Cyberattack Hits Ukraine Then Spreads Internationally.” 27 June 2017.

  1. Cyberattack Hits the World’s Biggest Shipping Company, CNBC, 27 June 2017.

McGoogan, Cara. Yahoo Finance. “Petya cyber attack: Everything to know about the global ransomware outbreak.” 27 June 2017.