THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The police cyberdome has ruled out a Petya ransomware attack on the computer network at the Thiruvananthapuram rural district police chief's office. According to the Cyberdome, it was an attack by a virus in the Wannacry family. The exact source of the virus could not be detected yet. The 40-odd computers that were hit were restored without any data loss.
The 40 computers in the network were hit by a virus attack on Wednesday. This triggered panic as it coincided with Petya ransomware attacks on scores of computers across the world, mainly Europe. The state IT department and Cyberdome had even raised an alert on the Petya ransomware, especially since the recent worldwide Wannacry ransomware had hit many computers in Kerala too.
Cyberdome operation officer Anilkumar K. told DC that a virus from the Wannacry family seemed to have attacked the computers at the rural district police chief's office. “It was a data encryption virus. We could restore the systems without data loss. There was no message demanding a ransom. Efforts are on to trace its source,” he said. Meanwhile, Kerala State IT Mission sources said that no Petya attack cases were reported in the state till June 29.
