Although India has lesser impact relatively on Ransomware attack still the country can’t afford to lower it;s guard as the world has not seen the last virus yet, warns the head of cyber security agency.
Multiple modules still can erupt and still emerge and cause disruptions, said Sanjay Bahl, director general of the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), in an interview to ET.
The next target is your smartphones as the threat isn’t over yet warns Bahl, The WannaCry ransomware has since Friday infected hundreds of thousands of desktops and laptops running on the Windows operating system.
“The larger operating system is on the mobile, which is Android. We don’t know what will happen if that gets hit. That will be a different ballgame altogether,” Bahl said, adding that CERT-In is preparing for that eventuality.
“Hackers will always be two steps ahead. We do not know what is going to come next and whether this is the end of this particular (attack) or if there will be a variant of it coming.”
Globally, the virus is reported to have infected at least 200,000 computers across 150 countries. Bahl said CERT-In has been carrying out cybersecurity drills for government departments, providing them with crisis management plans and the steps to be taken in the case of an attack.
After news of the WannaCry ransomware attack broke, the agency carried out a massive outreach operation covering the Union and state governments as well as agencies such as the National Informatics Centre and the Unique Identification Authority of India that issues the Aadhaar digital identity numbers.
For individuals, CERT-In put out an advisory on its website and conducted a webcast on Monday. The agency used its Facebook page and Twitter handle as well as the MyGov platform to spread the word, Bahl said.
“There was a massive outreach programme initiated on Saturday. It was a crisis situation and a lot of people were working behind the scenes,” said Bahl. “We are utilising all available channels… Going forward, we are going to leverage more,” he said.
India has been able to shield itself from the attack better than several other countries, with CERT-In receiving reports of only 85 machines infected as on Wednesday evening. Industry experts peg the number of infected computers at more than 40,000 across industries including banking, retail and manufacturing.