Critical Infrastructure Security, Malware, Ransomware

Separate ransomware attacks hit Ukraine and Canada

Two widely separated ransomware attacks against the Ukrainian energy ministry and the provincial government of Canada's Prince Edward Island (PEI) have knocked each agencies primary website offline.

The Ukrainian attack resulted in the energy ministry's files being encrypted and it being presented with a demand for 0.1 bitcoin, or just under $1,000, meanwhile, PEI was down for most of Monday, April 23 with the site being restored by late afternoon.

The BBC reported quoted the Ukrainian cyber-police which called the attack isolated to the energy ministry and that its email system is still up and running. However, other systems are still down and the ministry's IT team is working to rectify the situation.

The PEI attack, according to The Guardian, was confirmed by a provincial spokesman who said a system vulnerability, which has since been patched, gave the attackers access. The spokesman said no information appears to have been compromised by the incident and the ransom was not paid, but instead, the system was brought back online using back up files.

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