It is announced that the Petya attack that Maersk has paralyzed is not really ransomware, but rather a wiper that deletes all the files on the infected computer without the possibility of recovery.

As we did with WannaCry, we have been following the trail of Petya, the malware that has caused quite a stir by paralyzing Maersk and at least two airports in Ukraine, although the effects have been much lower than those caused by the famous WannaCry that paralyzed half the world and created chaos for hours, days and even weeks (a week ago the Toyota factory in Japan had to stop because of WannaCry). These attacks are not directed at individuals, they are usually directed at companies and public institutions, to generate chaos.

It has been discovered by cybersecurity experts, that Petya is not really a ransomware, as we all had thought in the first instance. We would really be looking at a Wiper, a malicious program that does not encrypt files like ransomware, but rather is dedicated to deleting all the files on a hard drive. It is for this reason that those who have been infected do not have the possibility of recovering any of the files, all the information has been lost. It was sold by crackers that could recover the data, in order to collect the ransom in Bitcoin.

Those infected had to pay $ 300 in Bitcoin to those who had launched the attack. To contact the hackers, Debian sent an email to the address that appeared on the screen, but hours after the attack was made public, this email address was no longer active. Logically, this prevents the attackers from being contacted to make the payment, thus preventing receiving the key, which on the other hand, was completely useless, because the files had already been deleted.

This wiper called Petya or NotPetya (some have started calling it that after it became known that it is a wiper), is actually based on Petya ransomware, but with certain changes. The benefits of deleting files are nil and knowing this information makes it impossible for anyone to pay, yes, for a certain time they have been able to have the benefit of collection, therefore, they will have really made some cash.

Source: indianexpress