After the first of its kind ransomware cyber attack in the State was detected at the Brahmapur City Hospital’s information management system on Monday, a similar attack was also reported on Wednesday at the Purusottampur Community Health Centre (CHC) near the city.
Though initially errors occurred in three computers at the office of the Purusottampur hospital, two could be restored after anti-virus software was reinstalled. However, the effort did not succeed on the hospital’s third computer, which is displaying the ‘WannaCry’ message.
The Brahmapur SDPO has launched a probe into the City Hospital ransomware attack case after Ganjam ADMO Saroj Kumar Mishra lodged a complaint with the Brahmapur Town police.
Meanwhile, the State Government geared up to tackle the situation, Information Technology (IT) Minister Chandra Sarathi Behera held a review meeting at the State Secretariat on the ransomware cyber-attack which was attended by National Informatics Centre (NIC) representatives and OCAC, IIIT and senior State Government officials.
later, Behera told reporters that toll-free numbers would be set up to create awareness on the ransomware virus and provide suggestions. He confirmed that the Brahmapur City Hospital’s information management system hack is the first cyber attack case in the State.
“A joint team of IIIT, NIC and OCAC will visit the Brahmapur City Hospital soon to probe the case,” he added. However, National Informatics Centre (NIC) Senior Technical Director Ashok Hota ruled out any ransomware attack threat to ATMs.
Meanwhile, the State IT Department has released an advisory to avoid any possible cyber attack in the State in future.
The department has advised all the departments to follow the instructions prescribed in the advisory to prevent computers from getting hacked. In the advisory, the department has asked the users to keep updating computers and anti-virus software installed in the system. It has also asked the users to keep back up of data regularly.The user must ensure that backup of all data is kept offline by keeping two files of data and documents on hard disk.
In another related development, the State Crime Branch on Wednesday took over the investigation of the WannaCry ransomeware attack in the Brahmapur City Hospital from the Town police.
A three-member team of the Cyber Crime police station was formed to investigate the case, informed Special DG (Crime Branch) Bijay Kumar Sharma in a Tweet.
Sharma further informed that the team would take up the investigations from the Brahmapur Town police, which had initially registered the case after the attack on Monday.