WannaCry ransomware: Andhra police fall prey to global cyber attack

India was among several nations, including Russia and Britain, that have been affected by a rogue cyber attack that infected computers.

In India, a section of computers of Andhra Pradesh’s police departments were affected during the attack.

Computers in 18 police units in Chittoor, Krishna, Guntur, Visakhapatnam and Srikakulam districts were affected, news agency PTI reported.

The cyber attack spread panic across the world after infecting thousands of computers of hospitals, railways, police and private companies, forcing the seven powerful countries (G7) to firm up action against such malicious attempts.

Operations of global corporations such as Renault, FedEx, Telefonica and Portugal Telecom were hit.

In Britain, state-run National Health Service’s hospitals and clinics were hit by the computer bug, while computers of Russia’s biggest lender Sberbank were affected. Agency reports suggest a new variant of “WannaCry” ransomware hit large networks by exploiting a known bug in Microsoft’s Windows operating system.

Cyber extortionists forced victims into opening malicious attachments, infected the computers and then demanded $300 to $600 to restore the systems.

Some victims were asked to pay through the digital currency bitcoin.

Researchers with security software maker Avast said they had observed 57,000 infections in 99 countries, with

Russia, Ukraine and Taiwan the top targets, according to a Reuters report.

The computer hacking tool is believed to have been developed by the United States’ National Security Agency.

Finance ministers from G7 are drawing up plans at a meeting in Italy to fight the growing threat of international cyber attacks