A series of cyber attacks gradually struck Ukraine, Russia, and most of Europe yesterday with Russian oil giant Rosneft, Ukrainian banks, Kiev’s main airport, and French construction company Saint-Gobain among the hardest hit, Aktualne.cz is reporting.
Infected computers display a message demanding a Bitcoin ransom worth $300; those who pay are told to send confirmation of payment to an email address.
In addition to the Czech Republic, Italy, Israel, Serbia, and a host of other Central and Eastern European countries were significantly affected.
In Ukraine, the virus has infected government computers. The Russian office of Home Credit, which includes the Czech financial group PPF, reported “unusual activity” on their servers.
Varování před novou vlnou šíření ransomwaru Petya / Petrwrap / NotPetya, která dnes zasáhla řadu států.https://t.co/ZHyZ8Hc629
According to a release from the Czech National Cyber Security Center (NCKB), “The completely new ransomware NotPetya began to spread over Tuesday and quickly infect a large number of computers, particularly in Ukraine, Russia, France, Denmark and Spain.”
The agency says it will continue to “Monitor the situation in the Czech Republic, more information will be added soon.”
Head of the Ukrainian Security Council Oleksandr Turčynov said that the incident “at first glance” bears features of a Russian cyber attack.
Analysts are calling it the biggest hack in Ukraine’s history (for some levity, see how the country’s government officials reacted on Twitter, below).
Some of our gov agencies, private firms were hit by a virus. No need to panic, we’re putting utmost efforts to tackle the issue ? pic.twitter.com/RsDnwZD5Oj
The NCKB warns, “Users are recommended in addition to continuous updates to the operating system, antivirus protection and security to take extra caution when working with unsolicited e-mails and unknown files…no protection is absolute and thus the most effective solution is to backup.”