Ransomware

From January to November of this year, 244 ransomware hacks were publicised

Up to 1,500 businesses around the world have been affected by a large-scale ransomware attack

Days after authorities announced that the Witting public hospital in Bucharest had been targeted by hackers, the Romanian Information Service, SRI, has called on the government to take "urgent" action to protect state-owned medical institutions from these disruptive threats.

The Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) announced today having investigated together with the National Cyber Security Incident Response Team CERT-RO and the Witting Bucharest Clinical Hospital a Phobos crypto ransomware attack on the servers of the health care facility.

According to Radio Free Europe, referring to the world media, this comes after the first man in America warned Moscow that it would face a proportionate response if the hacker attacks continue.
After meeting with top cybersecurity advisers on Wednesday, Biden said he would "deliver" Putin's response to a wave of ransomware attacks on US companies.

This was announced on the blog of a cybercrime gang known as REvil, Reuters reported.
Allan Liska, from the cybersecurity company Recorded Future, confirmed that the message is authentic, as well as that the cyber gang has been using that blog since last year.

The Japanese tech conglomerate Toshiba announced that its European operations suffered a ransomware cyber attack, Reuters reported. The French headquarter of the company was worst hit. Toshiba elaborated that the DarkSide, the hacking group blamed for crippling a major US pipeline company, had targeted it in a ransomware attack during the night of 4 May.

Motorists found gas pumps shrouded in plastic bags at tapped-out service stations across more than a dozen U.S. states on May 13 while the operator of the nation's largest gasoline pipeline reported making "substantial progress" in resolving the computer hack-induced shutdown responsible for the empty tanks.

"The low rate of solved cyber-crime cases is another indicator of the low level of readiness to solve cyber-attacks, even in cases of relatively 'less sophisticated' and 'domestic' cyber threats."

The measures worked, and the virus - a form of ransomware that had paralysed the hospital's computers - was eventually contained.

"You cannot prepare for a situation like that," recalls Branislav Moravcik, the head nurse at the hospital's Clinic of Anaesthesiology, Resuscitation and Intensive Resuscitation. "The key is not to panic."