Ransomware strikes Ggn firm, hackers want ₹25L in bitcoins

The hackers are expert criminals and they had professionally managed to hack the systems which led to breakdown in the operations.

a first in Gurgaon, a clothing company has become the victim of Ransomware attack. The company, which owns clothing brand Blackberrys, reported hacking of its servers by online operators who demanded ransom of US$15 bitcoins, around ₹25.13 lakhs.

Ransomware is a type of malicious software prepared to block access to a computer system with a threat to delete the data until the user pays ransom to the hacker.

The hackers encrypted the entire data of the clothing company that has its corporate office in Udyog Vihar phase 1, Gurgaon.

A case under section 384 of IPC and section 66 of the IT Act was registered by the Gurgaon police’s cyber crime cell on the complaint of the company management on Thursday after investigating the matter.

Mrityunjay Kumar, IT manager of Mohan Clothing Company private limited, complained to the police that the incident happened on March 16, when a complaint was received around 2am from IT employee of warehouse located in sector 8 IMT Manesar as the server had become non-accessible.

“The hackers are expert criminals and they had professionally managed to hack the systems which led to breakdown in the operations,” said Kumar in his complaint.

Kumar said he tried to remote test the server but it was not accessible, so he rushed to the corporate office and upon logging found that an encrypted program was running on the server. Although he manually removed the hardware lines and network cables to stop the encryption of some servers but it did not help much.

Thereafter, he contacted the hackers whose email was displayed on the system. The accused demanded ransom of 25 bitcoins, said Kumar.

A complaint was made to the Cyber cell of the Gurgaon police in this regard on Thursday.

“This is a very technical matter. We will seek the help of experts to probe the entire incident,” said Sandeep Khirwar, Gurgaon police commissioner.

A company spokesperson said that the software attack caused heavy impact on the business and a complaint was made to Gurgaon police to probe the matter and nab the culprits. “Delay in police case was caused as we were busy in retrieving back-end data as all operations were badly impacted,” said the spokesperson.

The hacking software has created a scare across the globe with a number of companies falling prey to it.