Gone down the Bad Rabbit hole?

In the past 24 hours, a new strain of ransomware has been spreading across Russia, Ukraine and various other countries around the world. With several attacks reported on major organisations. The “Bad Rabbit” ransomware bears similarities with “WannaCry” and “Petya” which we observed earlier this year. However, it is not yet know how far this new malware has spread.

Two public transport companies in Russia are said to be the worst affected. Their servers, computers and files being completely encrypted bringing all services to a standstill.

The US computer emergency readiness team said it “discourages individuals and businesses from paying the ransom as this does not guarantee that access will be restored”.

Earlier this year we suffered from 2 (WannaCry & Petya) other cyberattacks which also went on to spread across the globe. Infecting more and more for a few days which resulted in hundreds of thousands of pounds in ransom being paid out to the hackers. They held data at ransom and this affected many huge organisations, such as the NHS.

How does it work?

Ransomware typically encrypts all files and provides you with the link to an “onion” (dark web) site. This allows you to purchase a key to decrypt everything. A recent press release urges people not to pay the ransom of 0.05 bitcoin which is the equivalent to £213. As there is no guarantee that your files will be not be encrypted still once you have paid.

If this was to be even more high scale it could cause even more businesses to be rendered useless until the fix is issued. Your computer could be off-limits until they discover a way around paying the fee.

Want to protect your business from Bad Rabbit and other ransomware? Give us a call today 01709 464 323.