New Ransomware Linked to NotPetya Sweeps Russia and Ukraine
Just four months ago, a massive ransomware attack known as NotPetya ripped through Ukraine, Russia, and some multinational companies, infecting thousands of networks and eventually causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. Now, an apparent aftershock of that attack is reverberating through the region, as a new variant of that code locks up hundreds of machines and handicaps infrastructure.
On Tuesday, the security community began tracking a new outbreak of ransomware tied to NotPetya's authors. Known as BadRabbit, the the strain has infected hundreds of computers—mostly in Russia, but with some victims in Ukraine, Turkey, Bulgaria, and Germany—according to security firms including ESET and Kaspersky. For now, the outbreak remains only a small fraction of the size of the NotPetya epidemic. But it has nonetheless hit several Russian media outlets, including the newswire Interfax, according to the Russian security firm Group-IB, and also infected Ukraine's Odessa airport and Kiev subway system, partially paralyzing their IT systems and disabling the subway system's credit card payments, according to one Ukrainian government official.
