ETtech Explainer: Tracing ransomware’s path from floppy disks to crypto

India’s premier healthcare establishment, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), was dropped at its knees by a cyberattack on November 23, which crippled its techniques and slowed the processing of sufferers.

The establishment seemingly fell sufferer to a ransomware assault, a type of digital crime that’s more and more gaining popularity. According to a number of media stories, the attackers requested for a ransom of Rs 200 crore in bitcoin to free the info that they had held hostage.

Ransomware assaults

Ransomware assaults are carried out by putting in malware within the goal laptop, which encrypts priceless knowledge within the system. Cybercriminals then demand a ransom – sometimes in cryptocurrency to make sure anonymity – to decrypt the info. Some sorts of ransomware malware don’t encrypt knowledge, they merely lock down the goal system to make it inaccessible.
Malware can discover its strategy to the goal laptop system in a wide range of methods, from phishing assaults to the usage of untrusted functions and compromised WiFi networks.

Ransomware assaults have come a good distance for the reason that first such identified assault in 1989. Called the ’AIDS Trojan’, it was put in on a floppy disk disguised as a doc with details about the illness and despatched to greater than 20,000 folks by a scientist named Joseph Popp.

More than 30 years later, ransomware assaults are actually able to crippling large infrastructure tasks such because the Colonial Pipeline within the US. The pipeline, which carries from Texas virtually 45% of the gasoline consumed on the east coast of the US, was focused in a ransomware assault on May 7, 2021.

The assault resulted in panic shopping for of gasoline at stations throughout the nation. The Biden administration needed to briefly droop the bounds on the transportation of gasoline by way of roads and railways. The Colonial Pipeline Company ended up paying the hackers $4.4 million in bitcoin.

On December 13, 2020, Reuters reported about an assault on the US Treasury and Department of Commerce. It quickly emerged that the assault had gone undetected for months, and had many extra targets than initially reported.

Suspected to have been dedicated by a bunch backed by the Russian authorities, the assault hit organisations all over the world, together with a number of elements of the US federal authorities, resulting in a sequence of knowledge breaches.

Within days of its discovery, it was discovered to have focused at the least 200 organisations all over the world, together with NATO, the UK authorities, the European Parliament, and Microsoft.

Attacks on healthcare

AIIMS was not the primary healthcare organisation to have fallen sufferer to a ransomware assault.

In one of many first identified assaults on a significant hospital in 2016, a ransomware referred to as ‘Locky’ contaminated the Hollywood Presyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, holding its affected person knowledge for a ransom. The hospital ended up paying $17,000 to the attackers.

In one of many main cyberattacks of the final decade, a ransomware referred to as Wannacry infiltrated 1000’s of techniques operating on Windows worldwide.

It additionally affected the UK’s National Health Services (NHS). Reportedly, over 70,000 computer systems and medical imagery machines had been affected by the assault, bringing well being companies to a standstill.

Universal Health Services, the US healthcare supplier, was additionally hit by a cyberattack in 2020, affecting over 250 of its healthcare amenities throughout the nation.

India stays susceptible

Back dwelling, the security of e-infrastructure in India stays a urgent concern. Exposing the nation’s lack of preparedness in opposition to cyberattacks, Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital was hit by a ransomware assault days after the assault on AIIMS.

India is very susceptible to such assaults on well being organisations because the nation has no regulation mandating audits for healthcare techniques, and no knowledge safety regulation.

ET reported on December 5, citing consultants, that
healthcare knowledge breaches are more likely to change into extra commonplace worldwide, and particularly in India, the place cyberattacks of all types have reportedly tripled prior to now three years.