What A tragedy? The world most powerful country-America or United States- is scared of cyber attackers and fears that there could a ransomware attack during 2020 Election. As such , government plans to launch precautionary measures which focuses on protecting voter registration databases and systems.
US officials are still frightened of Russian hackers' attack in 2016 elections when important data were hijacked to influence the election outcome . Strong allegations had surfaced after Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton though almost all opinion polls were forecasting democratic party victory. The row gripped the Washington and kicked off multiple investigations into the campaign of President Trump. At the root of these inquiries are concerns about the security of the U.S. electoral process and fears that a rival power could influence an election’s results.
Now intelligence officials are concerned that 2016 can be repeated and foreign hackers in 2020 not only can target the databases but attempt to manipulate, disrupt or destroy the data. There are strong fears that databases could be targeted by ransomware, a type of virus that has crippled city computer networks recently across the United States, including in Texas, Baltimore and Atlanta.”
A ransomware attack locks an infected computer system until payment, usually in the form of cryptocurrency, is made to the hacker. Malware or ransomeware has been there world over around for years.The first ever ransomware was reported in 1991, when a biologist spread PC Cybor was sent by floppy disks via surface mail . In the mid of 2000, Archiveus was the first ransomware to use encryption, . Later in 2010. a series of "police" ransomware packages appeared. They began to exploit the new generation of anonymous payment services without getting caught.
Ransomware attacks rose in every country except India and the Britain, showed the findings based on an analysis 3.9 trillion malicious events in over 215 countries. The study detected threats in over 47,000 PDFs and almost 51,000 Office files in 2018. While ransomware attacks were down 49 per cent in India in 2018, the country experienced 53 per cent rise in malware attacks last year, according to a new report from cyber security firm SonicWall.Mar 28, 2019
Ransomware attacks were up in every geography except India and the UK, showed the findings based on an analysis 3.9 trillion malicious events in over 215 countries.
In 2017, A major global cyber attack disrupted computers at Russia's biggest oil company, Ukrainian banks and multinational firms infecting more than 300,000 computers. India largest port Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust in Mumbai had to shut down the operations at one of its three terminals as a fallout of the global ransomware attack The attack also crippled some central banks and many large corporations in Europe.
Year 2017 also saw the MCA21 system was subjected to WannaCry ransomware attack including India. The attack was first noticed on May 7. It was a fiest attack on a central government portal. Urgent measures were taken to contain it. In the same year, the WannaCry paralyzed computer systems and networks in more than 150 countries, including India, the third worst hit by the attack. However, there were less attacks in 2018 and till July, 2019.
Like US, India also run high risk of ransomeware attack. Hackers like ransomware because it is simple to create and use, it doesn’t need much in terms of skills or expertise to carry out. Desperation is a big reason for increasing ransomware attacks. India is the world’s most targeted country for ransomware according to Sophos. More than 67 percent of Indian organizations were victims of ransomware in 2017, with 38 percent hit twice causing US $1.17 million financial payments.
If US elections can be subjected to ransomeware. World largest democratic country, India can also be targeted. India like United States need to prepare itself smartly to meet the challenge of ransomware attackers.