Besides attacking computers at the Brahmapur City Hospital and Purusottampur Community Health Centre, the WannaCry ransomware has now targeted a rural bank in Balangir district.
Sources said the ransomware was detected in two computers of the Utkal Gramya Bank’s Titilagarh branch on Friday.
The bank officials were unable to access data in these two systems as it was encrypted by the hackers, who demanded $300 worth of Bitcoin (internet currency) to regain control over the data.
The bank officials reported the matter to the bank’s regional office, following which two experts were sent to fix the problem. The experts formatted the computers, after which it was detached from the server.
However, the other computers in the bank are not being used in the fear of getting affected with the malware, for which services in the bank have come to a grinding halt.
Meanwhile, a three-member team of the Cyber Cell of the State Crime Branch arrived in the silk city on Thursday to probe into the WannaCry Ransomware attack on the Brahmapur City Hospital’s NRHM office computers.
The investigating team headed by Inspector Anil Anand also visited the Purusottampur Community Health Centre (CHC) in Ganjam district, not far from Brahmapur.
During the team’s visit to Brahmapur, SDPO Santanu Kumar Dash, Big Bazaar police station IIC Suresh Tripathy and ADMO Saroj Kumar Mishra were present. The team refused to answer mediapersons’ queries and only said its report would be submitted to the State Government within four weeks.
Computers at the Brahmapur City Hospital and the Purusottampur CHC were hacked by the Ransomware virus ‘WannaCry’ on Wednesday. All data in computers of Purusottampur CHC have been encrypted and 300 dollars has been demanded to decrypt the same.
The Crime Branch took over the charge of investigation into the virus attack case from the Ganjam police on Wednesday. Special DG Bijay Kumar Sharma informed about the probe being under taken by the cyber cell of State Crime Branch through his Twitter account.