New Delhi: Centre said on Monday that there has been no report of major breach in security due to ransomware ‘WannaCry’ except some isolated incidents. This even as there were reports that 'WannaCry' spread globally was slowing down.
However, experts were are on high alert fearing second round of ransomware cyber attacks. “There is no major impact in India unlike other countries. We are keeping a close watch. As per the information received so far, there have been isolated incidents in limited areas in Kerala and Andhra Pradesh,” said IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad. He said the systems run by the National Informatics Centre were secured and running smoothly and a cyber coordination centre will start operating from next month to take precautions against such attacks.
On reports of networks of a few banks being compromised, the minister said he had no such information.
Separately some reports said that ransomware had infected 10 standalone computers of West Bengal state electricity distribution company. Computers in two panchayat offices in Kerala were disabled by the ransomware but no major damage was caused. Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, secretary Aruna Sundararajan told a news agency the government was constantly monitoring the situation and that a few stand-alone computers of a police department were “back in action” after being infected over the weekend. “India’s National Informatics Centre, which builds and manages almost all government websites, and the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, a premier research institute that has built supercomputers, have actively installed patches to immunise their Windows systems,” she said.
