States reel under cyber hit impact

Mumbai IT firms, ATMs affected

The ransomware cyber attack has impacted several Indian states including Maharashtra, West Bengal, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh. At least 100 systems across India have been locked out.

Many IT companies were hit in Mumbai. Employees at firms including L&T received e-mails that traces of ransomware were seen on certain systems.

The attack has also affected some hospitals including Jupiter Hospitals. Many ATM’s in Mumbai were shut on Monday.

India is on high alert, monitoring critical networks across sectors like banking, telecom, power and aviation to ensure that systems are protected.

The Centre, however, said on Monday that there was no serious impact on the country from the cyber attack, except for a few isolated incidents in Kerala and Andhra Pradesh, and steps were being taken to deal with any future threat.

The Centre, on Monday, said that there has been no report of a major breach in security due to ransomware “WannaCry” except for some isolated incidents, even as there were reports that “WannaCry” was slowing down. However, experts are on high alert fearing second round of ransomware cyber attacks.

“There is no major impact in India unlike other countries. We are keeping a close watch. As per the information received so far, there have been isolated incidents in limited areas in Kerala and Andhra Pradesh,” said IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad. He said the systems run by the National Informatics Centre were secured and running smoothly and a cyber coordination centre will start operating from next month to take precautions against such attacks.

On reports of networks of a few banks being compromised, the minister said he had no such information.

Separately, some reports said that ransomware had infected 10 standalone computers of West Bengal state electricity distribution company. Computers in two panchayat offices in Kerala were disabled by the ransomware, but no major damage was caused.

Ministry of electronics and information technology secretary Aruna Sundararajan told a news agency the government was constantly monitoring the situation and that a few standalone computers of a police department were “back in action” after being infected over the weekend.