The Petya ransomware virus attacked a number
of Russian and Ukrainian companies earlier on Tuesday.
MOSCOW,
June 27. /TASS/. Neither the Kremlin website nor its computer systems have been
affected by today’s hacker attack, Russian president’s press secretary Dmitry
Peskov told TASS on Tuesday. "Everything is operating routinely," he
said.
Group-IB, a
company dealing with prevention of and investigation into cybercrimes, said on
Tuesday a Petya ransomware virus attacked a number of companies, such as
Rosneft, Bashneft, Mars, Nivea and Mondelez International (manufacturer of Alep
Gold chocolates).
The Petya
virus infects computer files and extorts a $300-bitcoin ransom to unblock them.
According to Group-IB specialists, this virus has been recently used by the
Cobalt group to hide traces of its attack on financial institutions.
The latest
large-scale attack on computers of Russian companies and government
institutions was staged on May 12, when unidentified hackers tried to attack
Windows OS computers in 74 countries with a WannaCry ransomware virus that
extorted a $600-bitcoin ransom to unblock them. According to the Russian cybersecurity
and anti-virus provider Kaspersky Lab, a total of 45,000 cyber attacks were
carried out across the world. Most of the attempts at infecting computers were
registered in Russia.
Some
reports said that they used a hacking tool developed by the US National
Security Agency.
Source: ITAR-TASS 28-06-2017
