PARIS (AP) – A cyberattack that caused indiscriminate economic damage around the world was apparently designed to create maximum havoc in Russia’s neighbor and adversary Ukraine, security researchers said.
While the rogue software used in the attack was configured as extortionate “ransomware,” that may have just been a ruse.
“It is clear that this was targeted indiscriminately at Ukrainian businesses, and the Ukrainian government,” Jake Williams, president of the security firm Rendition Infosec and a former member of the U.S. National Security Agency’s elite cyberwarfare group, told The Associated Press in an online chat. “The ‘ransomware’ component is just a smokescreen (and a bad one).”
UKRAINE IN PAIN
Although the attack was global in its reach, Ukraine bore the brunt. Computers were disabled at banks, government agencies, energy companies, supermarkets, railways and telecommunications providers. Many of these organizations said they had recovered by Thursday, although some experts suspected that work was incomplete.