Tag Archives: Cyber Attack

Key U.S. senators demand answers on Equifax hacking

Credit reporting company Equifax Inc. corporate offices are pictured in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., September 8, 2017. REUTERS/Tami Chappell

By David Shepardson and Dustin Volz

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Two key U.S. senators on Monday asked Equifax Inc <EFX.N> to answer detailed questions about a breach of information affecting up to 143 million Americans, including whether U.S. government agency records were compromised in the hack.

Senator Orrin Hatch, who chairs the Finance Committee, and ranking Democrat Ron Wyden, also demanded that Equifax Chief Executive Rick Smith provide a timeline of the breach and its discovery. They asked for information on when authorities and the company’s board were notified and when three executives who sold stock in the company in August were first told of the data breach.

Equifax did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter. It came amid mounting scrutiny of the company’s response to the breach from lawmakers, regulators and security experts, prompting the credit-monitoring services to issue an apology on Friday and pledge to dedicate more resources to helping affected consumers.

“The scope and scale of this breach appears to make it one of the largest on record, and the sensitivity of the information compromised may make it the most costly to taxpayers and consumers,” the letter said.

Equifax announced last week that it learned on July 29 that hackers had infiltrated its systems in mid-May, pilfering names, birthdays, addresses and Social Security and driver’s license numbers. Cyber security experts said it was among the largest data hacks ever recorded and was particularly troubling due to the richness of the information exposed.

Three days after Equifax discovered the breach, three top Equifax executives, including Chief Financial Officer John Gamble and a president of a unit, sold Equifax shares or exercised options to dispose of stock worth about $1.8 million, regulatory filings show.

Equifax said in a statement last week that the executives were not aware that an intrusion had occurred when they sold their shares.

Hatch and Wyden asked Smith to respond by Sept. 28. Other congressional committees have announced plans to hold hearings investigating the Equifax breach and want answers.

The senators want to know if Equifax has a chief information security officer and over the past two years “how many times has Equifax employed third-party cyber security experts to conduct penetration tests of its internal and external systems?” The senators want copies of all Equifax penetration test and audit reports by outside cyber security firms.

Separately, a group of 20 Democratic senators asked Equifax to end its use of forced arbitration agreements, which limit the ability of consumers to pursue claims, and not to lobby to reverse a new rule from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to limit the use of forced arbitration in the financial services sector.

(Reporting by Dustin Volz and David Shepardson; Editing by Andrew Hay and Jonathan Oatis)

Exclusive: India and Pakistan hit by spy malware – cybersecurity firm

FILE PHOTO: A Symantec security app is seen on a phone in this illustration photo taken May 23, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration/File Photo

By Rahul Bhatia

MUMBAI (Reuters) – Symantec Corp, a digital security company, says it has identified a sustained cyber spying campaign, likely state-sponsored, against Indian and Pakistani entities involved in regional security issues.

In a threat intelligence report that was sent to clients in July, Symantec said the online espionage effort dated back to October 2016.

The campaign appeared to be the work of several groups, but tactics and techniques used suggest that the groups were operating with “similar goals or under the same sponsor”, probably a nation state, according to the threat report, which was reviewed by Reuters. It did not name a state.

The detailed report on the cyber spying comes at a time of heightened tensions in the region.

India’s military has raised operational readiness along its border with China following a face-off in Bhutan near their disputed frontier, while Indo-Pakistan tensions are also simmering over the disputed Kashmir region.

A spokesman for Symantec said the company does not comment publicly on the malware analysis, investigations and incident response services it provides clients.

Symantec did not identify the likely sponsor of the attack. But it said that governments and militaries with operations in South Asia and interests in regional security issues would likely be at risk from the malware. The malware utilizes the so-called “Ehdoor” backdoor to access files on computers.

“There was a similar campaign that targeted Qatar using programs called Spynote and Revokery,” said a security expert, who requested anonymity. “They were backdoors just like Ehdoor, which is a targeted effort for South Asia.”

CLICKBAIT

To install the malware, Symantec found, the attackers used decoy documents related to security issues in South Asia. The documents included reports from Reuters, Zee News, and the Hindu, and were related to military issues, Kashmir, and an Indian secessionist movement.

The malware allows spies to upload and download files, carry out processes, log keystrokes, identify the target’s location, steal personal data, and take screenshots, Symantec said, adding that the malware was also being used to target Android devices.

In response to frequent cyber-security incidents, India in February established a center to help companies and individuals detect and remove malware. The center is operated by the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In).

Gulshan Rai, the director general of CERT-In, declined to comment specifically on the attack cited in the Symantec report, but added: “We took prompt action when we discovered a backdoor last October after a group in Singapore alerted us.” He did not elaborate.

Symantec’s report said an investigation into the backdoor showed that it was constantly being modified to provide “additional capabilities” for spying operations.

A senior official with Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency said it had not received any reports of malware incidents from government information technology departments. He asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.

A spokesman for FireEye, another cybersecurity company, said that based on an initial review of the malware, it had concluded that an internet protocol address in Pakistan had submitted the malware to a testing service. The spokesman requested anonymity, citing company policy.

Another FireEye official said the attack reported by Symantec was not surprising.

“South Asia is a hotbed of geopolitical tensions, and wherever we find heightened tensions we expect to see elevated levels of cyber espionage activity,” said Tim Wellsmore, FireEye’s director of threat intelligence for the Asia Pacific region.

The Symantec report said the ‘Ehdoor’ backdoor was initially used in late 2016 to target government, military and military-affiliated targets in the Middle East and elsewhere.

(Reporting by Rahul Bhatia. Additional reporting by Jeremy Wagstaff in Singapore.; Editing by Euan Rocha and Philip McClellan)

Ukraine cyber security firm warns of possible new attacks

Ukraine cyber security firm warns of possible new attacks

KIEV (Reuters) – Ukrainian cyber security firm ISSP said on Tuesday it may have detected a new computer virus distribution campaign, after security services said Ukraine could face cyber attacks similar to those which knocked out global systems in June.

The June 27 attack, dubbed NotPetya, took down many Ukrainian government agencies and businesses, before spreading rapidly through corporate networks of multinationals with operations or suppliers in eastern Europe.

ISPP said that, as with NotPetya, the new malware seemed to originate in accounting software and could be intended to take down networks when Ukraine celebrates its Independence Day on Aug. 24.

“This could be an indicator of a massive cyber attack preparation before National Holidays in Ukraine,” it said in a statement.

In a statement, the state cyber police said they also had detected new malicious software.

The incident is “in no way connected with global cyber attacks like those that took place on June 27 of this year and is now fully under control,” it said.

The state cyber police and the Security and Defence Council have said Ukraine could be targeted with a NotPetya-style attack aimed at destabilizing the country as it marks its 1991 independence from the Soviet Union.

Last Friday, the central bank said it had warned state-owned and private lenders of the appearance of new malware, spread by opening email attachments of word documents.

Ukraine – regarded by some, despite Kremlin denials, as a guinea pig for Russian state-sponsored hacks – is fighting an uphill battle in turning pockets of protection into a national strategy to keep state institutions and systemic companies safe.

(Reporting by Natalia Zinets; Additional reporting by Pavel Polityuk; Writing by Alessandra Prentice; editing by Mark Heinrich and Richard Balmforth)

Ukraine central bank warns of new cyber-attack risk

Ukraine central bank warns of new cyber-attack risk

By Natalia Zinets

KIEV (Reuters) – The Ukrainian central bank said on Friday it had warned state-owned and private lenders of the appearance of new malware as security services said Ukraine faced cyber attacks like those that knocked out global systems in June.

The June 27 attack, dubbed NotPetya, took down many Ukrainian government agencies and businesses, before spreading rapidly through corporate networks of multinationals with operations or suppliers in eastern Europe.

Kiev’s central bank has since been working with the government-backed Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) and police to boost the defenses of the Ukrainian banking sector by quickly sharing information.

“Therefore on Aug. 11…, the central bank promptly informed banks about the appearance of new malicious code, its features, compromise indicators and the need to implement precautionary measures to prevent infection,” the central bank told Reuters in emailed comments.

According to its letter to banks, seen by Reuters, the new malware is spread by opening email attachments of word documents.

“The nature of this malicious code, its mass distribution, and the fact that at the time of its distribution it was not detected by any anti-virus software, suggest that this attack is preparation for a mass cyber-attack on the corporate networks of Ukrainian businesses,” the letter said.

Ukraine – regarded by some, despite Kremlin denials, as a guinea pig for Russian state-sponsored hacks – is fighting an uphill battle in turning pockets of protection into a national strategy to keep state institutions and systemic companies safe.

The state cyber police and Security and Defence Council have said Ukraine could be targeted on Aug. 24 with a NotPetya-style attack aimed at destabilizing the country as it celebrates its 1991 independence from the Soviet Union.

(Writing by Alessandra Prentice; editing by Mark Heinrich)

Ukraine finally battens down its leaky cyber hatches after attacks

FILE PHOTO: A message demanding money is seen on a monitor of a payment terminal at a branch of Ukraine's state-owned bank Oschadbank after Ukrainian institutions were hit by a wave of cyber attacks earlier in the day, in Kiev, Ukraine, June 27, 2017. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko/File Photo

By Matthias Williams

KIEV (Reuters) – When the chief of Microsoft Ukraine switched jobs to work for President Petro Poroshenko, he found that everyone in the office used the same login password. It wasn’t the only symptom of lax IT security in a country suffering crippling cyber attacks.

Sometimes pressing the spacebar was enough to open a PC, according to Dmytro Shymkiv, who became Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration with a reform brief in 2014.

Today discipline is far tighter in the president’s office. But Ukraine – regarded by some, despite Kremlin denials, as a guinea pig for Russian state-sponsored hacks – is fighting an uphill battle in turning pockets of protection into a national strategy to keep state institutions and systemic companies safe.

As in many aspects of Ukrainian life, corruption is a problem. Most computers run on pirated software, and even when licensed programs are used, they can be years out of date and lack security patches to help keep the hackers at bay.

Three years into the job, Shymkiv is leading the fight back. He has put together a team, led by a former Microsoft colleague, doing drills, sending out email bulletins to educate staff on new viruses and doing practice hacks offsite.

In the early days, staff complacency and resistance to change were as much a problem as insecure equipment.

“I remember the first weeks when we forced people to do a password change,” Shymkiv told Reuters. “My team heard all kind of screams and disrespectful messages … Over three years, it’s a different organization.”

The team’s small office has a screen with dials, charts and a green spider web showing activity on the network. If there is an attack, a voice shouts “major alarm!” in English, a recording the team downloaded from YouTube.

Eliminating bad practices and introducing good ones is the reason, Shymkiv believes, why the presidential administration was immune to a June 27 virus that spread from Ukraine to cause disruption in companies as far away as India and Australia.

But the country still has a long way to go. Since 2014 repeated cyber attacks have knocked out power supplies, frozen supermarket tills, affected radiation monitoring at the stricken Chernobyl nuclear power plant, and forced the authorities to prop up the hryvnia currency after banks’ IT systems crashed.

Even Poroshenko’s election that year was compromised by a hack on the Central Election Commission’s network, trying to proclaim victory for a far-right candidate — a foretaste of alleged meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Ukraine believes the attacks are part of Russia’s “hybrid war” waged since protests in 2014 moved Ukraine away from Moscow’s orbit and closer to the West. Moscow has denied running hacks on Ukraine.

Shymkiv said the task is to “invest in my team, and upgrade them, and teach them, and connect them with other organizations who are doing the right things”.

“If you do nothing like this, you probably will be wiped out,” he added.

The head of Shymkiv’s IT team, Roman Borodin, said the administration is hit by denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks around once every two weeks, and by viruses specifically designed to target it. The hackers seem mainly interested in stealing information from the defense and foreign relations departments, Borodin told Reuters in his first ever media interview.

HONOR AT STAKE

Bruised by past experiences, Ukraine is protecting itself better.

Finance Minister Oleksandr Danylyuk told Reuters his ministry overhauled security after a hack in November crashed 90 percent of its network at the height of budget preparations.

Officials couldn’t log into the system that manages budget transactions for 48 hours, something that played on Danylyuk’s mind as he addressed the Verkhovna Rada or parliament.

“Imagine that, knowing this, I went to the Verkhovna Rada to present the budget – the main financial document on which 45 million people live – and at the same time I was thinking about how to save not only the document itself, but also the honor of the ministry,” he said.

“I understood that if I showed even the slightest hint of our nervousness, the organizers of the attack would achieve their goal.”

Consultants uncovered familiar weaknesses: the budget system operated on a platform dating from 2000, and the version of the database management system should have been upgraded in 2006.

The ministry is introducing new systems to detect anomalies and to improve data protection. “We’re completely revising and restructuring the ministry’s IT landscape,” Danylyuk said.

The ministry emerged unscathed from the June 27 attack. Others weren’t so lucky: Deputy Prime Minister Pavlo Rozenko tweeted a picture of a crashed computer in the cabinet office that same day.

Ukraine is also benefiting from help from abroad.

A cyber police force was set up in 2015 with British funding and training in a project coordinated by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

While Ukraine is not a NATO member, the Western alliance supplied equipment to help piece together who was behind the June attack and is helping the army set up a cyber defense unit.

Ukraine shares intelligence with neighboring Moldova, another ex-Soviet state that has antagonized Moscow by moving closer to the West and complains of persistent Russian cyber attacks on its institutions.

“At the beginning of this year we had attacks on state-owned enterprises. If it were not for cooperation with the guys from Moldova, we would not have identified these criminals,” Serhiy Demedyuk, the head of the Ukrainian cyber police, told Reuters.

Demedyuk said the attack had been staged by a Russian citizen using a server in Moldova, but declined to give further details.

LAYING DOWN THE LAW

While there has been progress in some areas, Ukraine is still fighting entrenched problems. No less than 82 percent of software is unlicensed, compared with 17 percent in the United States, according to a 2016 survey by the Business Software Alliance, a Washington-based industry group.

Experts say pirated software was not the only factor in the June attack, which also hit up-to-date computers, but the use of unlicensed programs means security patches which could limit the rapid spread of such infections cannot be applied.

Ukraine ranked 60 out of 63 economies in a 2017 survey on digital competitiveness by the International Institute for Management Development. The low ranking is tied to factors such as a weak regulatory framework.

Another problem is that Ukraine has no single agency in charge of ensuring that state bodies and companies of national importance, such as banks, are protected.

This surfaced on June 27, when the NotPetya virus penetrated the company that produces M.E.Doc, an accounting software used by around 80 percent of Ukrainian businesses.

“Locally, the weak spot is accounting, but more generally it is the lack of cyber defenses at a government level. There aren’t agencies analyzing risks at a government level,” said Aleksey Kleschevnikov, the owner of internet provider Wnet, which hosted M.E.Doc’s servers.

Valentyn Petrov, head of the information security department at the National Security and Defence Council, said the state cannot interfere with companies’ security.

“It’s a total disaster from our perspective,” he told Reuters. “All state companies, including state banks, have suffered from attacks, and we really have no influence on them – neither on issuing regulations or checking how they fulfill these regulations.”

Poroshenko signed a decree in February to improve protection of critical institutions. This proposed legislation to spell out which body was in charge of coordinating cyber security and a unified methodology for assessing threats.

The law failed to gather enough votes the day before parliament’s summer recess in July, and MPs voted against extending the session. Shymkiv called that a “big disgrace”.

He added that in many ministries and firms, “we’ve seen very little attention to the IT infrastructures, and it’s something that’s been lagging behind for years”.

Attitudes can be slow to change. Borodin said a policy at the administration to lock computer screens after 15 minutes of inactivity was greeted with indignation. One staffer pointed out that their room was protected by an armed guard.

The staffer said “‘I have a guy with a weapon in my room. Who can steal information from this computer?'” Borodin recounted.

(Additional reporting by Pavel Polityuk, Jack Stubbs, Natalia Zinets and Margaryta Chornokondratenko in Kiev, Eric Auchard in Frankfurt and David Mardiste in Tallinn; editing by David Stamp)

North Korea hacking increasingly focused on making money more than espionage: South Korea study

A projection of cyber code on a hooded man is pictured in this illustration picture taken on May 13, 2017. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/Illustration

By Christine Kim

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea is behind an increasingly orchestrated effort at hacking into computers of financial institutions in South Korea and around the world to steal cash for the impoverished country, a South Korean state-backed agency said in a report.

In the past, suspected hacking attempts by North Korea appeared intended to cause social disruption or steal classified military or government data, but the focus seems to have shifted in recent years to raising foreign currency, the South’s Financial Security Institute (FSI) said.

The isolated regime is suspected to be behind a hacking group called Lazarus, which global cybersecurity firms have linked to last year’s $81 million cyber heist at the Bangladesh central bank and the 2014 attack on Sony’s Hollywood studio.

The U.S. government has blamed North Korea for the Sony hack and some U.S. officials have said prosecutors are building a case against Pyongyang in the Bangladesh Bank theft.

In April, Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab also identified a hacking group called Bluenoroff, a spin off of Lazarus, as focused on attacking mostly foreign financial institutions.

The new report, which analyzed suspected cyber attacks between 2015 and 2017 on South Korean government and commercial institutions, identified another Lazarus spinoff named Andariel.

“Bluenoroff and Andariel share their common root, but they have different targets and motives,” the report said. “Andariel focuses on attacking South Korean businesses and government agencies using methods tailored for the country.”

Pyongyang has been stepping up its online hacking capabilities as one way of earning hard currency under the chokehold of international sanctions imposed to stop the development of its nuclear weapons program.

Cyber security researchers have also said they have found technical evidence that could link North Korea with the global WannaCry “ransomware” cyber attack that infected more than 300,000 computers in 150 countries in May.

“We’ve seen an increasing trend of North Korea using its cyber espionage capabilities for financial gain. With the pressure from sanctions and the price growth in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum – these exchanges likely present an attractive target,” said Luke McNamara, senior analyst at FireEye, a cybersecurity company.

North Korea has routinely denied involvement in cyber attacks against other countries. The North Korean mission to the United Nations was not immediately available for comment.

ATM, ONLINE POKER

The report said the North Korean hacking group Andariel has been spotted attempting to steal bank card information by hacking into automated teller machines, and then using it to withdraw cash or sell the bank information on the black market. It also created malware to hack into online poker and other gambling sites and steal cash.

“South Korea prefers to use local ATM vendors and these attackers managed to analyze and compromise SK ATMs from at least two vendors earlier this year,” said Vitaly Kamluk, director of the APAC research center at Kaspersky.

“We believe this subgroup (Andariel) has been active since at least May 2016.”

The latest report lined up eight different hacking instances spotted within the South in the last few years, which North Korea was suspected to be behind, by tracking down the same code patterns within the malware used for the attacks.

One case spotted last September was an attack on the personal computer of South Korea’s defense minister as well as the ministry’s intranet to extract military operations intelligence.

North Korean hackers used IP addresses in Shenyang, China to access the defense ministry’s server, the report said.

Established in 2015, the FSI was launched by the South Korean government in order to boost information management and protection in the country’s financial sector following attacks on major South Korean banks in previous years.

The report said some of the content has not been proven fully and is not an official view of the government.

(Additional reporting by Jeremy Wagstaff in SINGAPORE; Editing by Soyoung Kim and Michael Perry)

Italy’s UniCredit reveals data attack involving 400,000 clients

Unicredit bank logo is seen in the old city centre of Siena, Italy June 29, 2017. REUTERS/Stefano Rellandini

By Paola Arosio and Gianluca Semeraro

MILAN (Reuters) – Suspected hackers have accessed client data of Italy’s biggest lender, UniCredit <CRDI.MI>, in two attacks in the past 10 months and affected about 400,000 Italian customers, the most serious data breach ever reported by a major Italian lender.

No passwords were stolen in the attacks, which first occurred in September and October of 2016 and again in June and July of this year, but personal and banking details could have been accessed, UniCredit said in a statement.

The attacks were carried out through an external commercial partner, which UniCredit did not identify. Wednesday’s statement also did not describe how the intruders accessed the data nor when the bank became aware of the first intrusion.

A source familiar with the matter said the bank had only uncovered the data breaches between Monday and Tuesday.

“The bank immediately adopted all necessary measures to prevent a repeat of such intrusions,” the bank said, adding that it had notified law-enforcement authorities.

The head of UniCredit’s information technology unit, Daniele Tonella, said none of the data accessed by the attackers allowed any financial transaction to be carried out.

“We don’t know why this data was acquired,” he told Reuters, adding that it also did not know who was behind the attacks.

Attacks on banks in recent years have become more sophisticated and resulted in mounting financial losses.

They have evolved beyond data breaches, in which personal information are stolen, to include denial-of-service attacks which have knocked out access to online banking services for up to several days and even intrusions into core banking systems.

Last November, attackers stole more than 2.5 million pounds ($3.25 million) from Tesco Bank in Britain’s largest disclosed cyber heist.

UniCredit shares were down 0.9 percent at 16.87 euros in late morning trade.

(Additional reporting by Silvia Aloisi; Editing by Mark Bendeich and Edmund Blair)

Half of German companies hit by sabotage, spying in last two years, BSI says

FILE PHOTO: A man types on a computer keyboard in front of the displayed cyber code in this illustration picture taken on March 1, 2017. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/Illustration/File Photo

BERLIN (Reuters) – More than half the companies in Germany have been hit by spying, sabotage or data theft in the last two years, the German IT industry association Bitkom said on Friday, and estimated the attacks caused around 55 billion euros’ worth of damage a year.

Several high-profile attacks have occurred recently, such as the WannaCry ransomware attacks in May and a virus dubbed “NotPetya” that halted production at some companies for more than a week. Others lost millions of euros to organized crime in a scam called “CEO Fraud”.

Some 53 percent of companies in Germany have been victims of industrial espionage, sabotage or data theft in the last two years, Bitkom found – up from 51 percent in a 2015 study.

At the same time, the damage caused rose by 8 percent to around 55 billion euros a year, the survey of 1,069 managers and people responsible for security in various sectors found.

Arne Schoenbohm, president of Germany’s BSI federal cyber agency, said many big companies and especially those operating critical infrastructure were generally well-prepared for cyber attacks. But many smaller and medium-sized companies did not take the threat seriously enough, he said.

“The high number of companies affected clearly shows that we still have work to do on cyber security in Germany,” he said in a statement on Friday.

The BSI urged companies in Europe’s largest economy to make information security a top priority and said all companies need to report serious IT security incidents, even if anonymously.

Schoenbohm told Reuters in an interview that hardware and software makers should do their part to shore up cyber security and patch weaknesses in software more quickly once identified.

“There’s still a lot of work to be done,” he said. “We have to be careful that we don’t focus solely on industry and computer users, but also look at the producers and quality management.”

Some 62 percent of companies affected found those behind the attacks were either current or former employees. Forty-one percent blamed competitors, customers, suppliers or service providers for the attacks, Bitkom said.

Foreign intelligence agencies were found to be responsible in 3 percent of the cases, it said.

Twenty-one percent believed hobby hackers were responsible while 7 percent attributed attacks to organized crime.

(Reporting by Michelle Martin, Andrea Shalal and Thorsten Severin; Editing by Larry King and Hugh Lawson)

FedEx says cyber attack to hurt full-year results

A Federal Express truck is shown on deliver in La Jola, California, U.S., May 17, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake

(Reuters) – Package delivery company FedEx Corp <FDX.N> said a disruption in services in its TNT Express unit following a cyber attack last month would hurt its full-year results.

FedEx’s shares fell as much as 3.4 percent to $211.53 in early trading as the company said the financial impact of the disruption on its results was likely to be “material”.

The Netherlands-based TNT Express is still experiencing widespread service delays following the attack, caused by the Petya cyber virus that spread through a Ukrainian tax software product, FedEx said.

FedEx said it lost revenue due to decreased volumes at TNT Express and incurred incremental costs from contingency plans and remediation of affected systems.

The company said it did not have an insurance in place that covered the impact from the cyber attack.

FedEx, which is evaluating the financial impact of the cyber attack, said it was unable to estimate when services at TNT Express would be fully restored. (http://bit.ly/2uAnQKG)

The company also said no data breach or data loss to third parties was known to have occurred as of July 17.

The Petya cyber virus spread from Ukraine in June, crippling thousands of computers around the globe, with the shipping and logistics industry among those hit the hardest.

The malicious code encrypted data on machines and demanded victims $300 ransoms for recovery, similar to the extortion tactic used in the global WannaCry ransomware attack in May.

FedEx is scheduled to report its first-quarter results in September.

(Reporting by Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel and Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)

German military aviation command launches cyber threat initiative

A German Air Force piolt poses inside the cockpit of an Airbus A400M military aircraft at the ILA Berlin Air Show in Schoenefeld, south of Berlin, Germany, June 1, 2016. Picture taken with a fish-eye lens. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

By Andrea Shalal

BERLIN (Reuters) – The German military’s aviation safety chief has launched a new initiative against cyber threats, citing research that he said shows hackers can commandeer military airplanes with the help of equipment that costs about 5,000 euros ($5,700).

A defense ministry spokesman told Reuters that development of new “aviation cyber expertise” would cover everything from raising consciousness about cyber threats to technical research projects and equipping aircraft with protective systems.

State Secretary Katrin Suder had backed the idea, which Major General Ansgar Rieks, head of the German Military Aviation Authority, proposed in a letter in June, the spokesman said.

Rieks said last week that he was unnerved by a demonstration by the government-funded German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Bavaria showing hackers could take control of an aircraft with inexpensive equipment.

“That frightens me. I wrote to the state secretary about it and said doing nothing would amount to gross negligence,” he said at a talk at a conference in Bueckeburg, Germany. He said the issue was also a vital concern for civil aviation.

He said military officials needed to focus not just on potential problems with computer software, but should also work to “ensure that airplanes cannot be taken over from the ground, or possibly by a passenger in the air”.

A spokesman for the DLR, which has studied aviation cyber security extensively, had no immediate comment on the issue.

Germany’s military this year launched a new cyber command that groups cyber units from across the military, which will also involved in the new aviation cyber initiative.

Cyber resilience – making sure that systems can survive a cyber attack and keep functioning – was a major topic during a conference at Bundeswehr University Munich last month, the DLR spokesman said.

Germany’s military is also working on the aviation cyber issue within the European Union and NATO, he said.

Concerns about cyber attacks on aircraft and in the broader aviation sector have grown sharply in recent years with a growing barrage of attacks and breaches against other sectors.

Many experts fear that the aviation industry has not kept pace with the threat hackers pose to increasingly computer-connected airplanes.

Rapid adoption of communication protocols similar to those used on the internet to connect cockpits, cabins and ground controls, have left air traffic open to vulnerabilities bedevilling other sectors such as finance and oil and gas.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Louise Ireland)