“A new form of malware hit the internet Tuesday, shutting down systems across Europe and impacting companies from the U.S. to Russia. Unfortunately, the attack, which early reports indicate seems to have hurt Ukrainian organizations and agencies more in particular, is still largely a mystery for security researchers.
A form of ransomware, the malware encrypts a victim’s PC and demands that they pay $300 in exchange for the keys to unlock their computer or lose all of their data. The attack even managed to affect radiation monitoring equipment at the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear disaster site, forcing workers to rely on manual checks instead.
Cybersecurity firms originally believed the malware to be a perviously known form of ransomware called Petya, but Kaspersky Lab says it’s actually a different, unknown version kind of ransomware, causing the cybersecurity company to dub it NotPetya.
Interestingly, the Petya/NotPetya software uses a Microsoft (MSFT) Windows vulnerability similar to the one exploited by the WannaCry 2.0 ransomware which hit the web a few weeks ago. But it looks like that exploit, which was originally used by the NSA and called EternalBlue, is just one of three attack points this ransomware takes advantage of.”