50 IT companies in Hyderabad hit by Pakistani hackers: Report

With businesses gone online, there has been an increase in cyber threats. The latest report by the Society for Cyberabad Security Council (SCSC) reveals that at least 50 IT companies have come under the threat of cyber attacks, according to The Times of India.

According to the report , information was stolen using ‘ransomware’ and in return bitcoins were demanded in order to hand back the decryption keys. These attacks are said to be launched by Pakistani hackers, who used servers in Turkey, Somalia and Saudi Arabia.

“A few of these attacks have been sorted out although majority are still being tackled. It is a sudden spurt in ransomware attacks. Almost all the attacks in the last 10 days have originated from Pakistan,” Devraj Wodeyar, head, Cyber Security Forum that comes under Society of Cyberabad Security Council (SCSC) told the news site.

Some companies directly reported the matter to SCSC, but not all. It learnt about others only via private security firms that these companies had approached. The companies aren’t disclosed for security reasons. Cyberabad reportedly has around 2500 IT companies, and most of these provide solutions to businesses across the globe. One of the companies was demanded 1 lakh bitcoins, which is roughly Rs 420 crore.

“Explaining the method of attacks, officials said the proxy servers were changed every five minutes, but somehow the ethical hackers team managed to nail the location of the actual attackers through IP addresses, the port used and the network node,” the report adds.

In June earlier this year, Kaspersky security firm’s Director of Global Research and Analysis Team Vitaly Kamluk, had said how India stands among the top 5 countries in the world attacked by ransomware. Recently, he disclosed that  one-third of the ransomware incidents in APAC in Q3 2016 were in India.