State IT dept takes steps to avoid Petwrap ransomware

The state IT and Electronics department has taken necessary measures to avoid attacks by Petwrap ransomware.

The department has ensured that due protection is taken and compliance made in regard to critical infrastructure pertaining to IT including state data centre and West Bengal State Wide Area Networking amongst others.

Krishna Gupta, Principal Secretary of department of IT & E informed that effective steps have been taken which have led to pre-emption of the ongoing cyber attacks and a zero impact on the state government networks.

These steps include blocking of some source mail IDs, blocking of some domains, blocking of some IP addresses, instruction for installing

latest patches for the operating systems, instruction for

installing latest anti-virus updates etc, said Gupta in a press statement issued by the Information and Cultural Affairs Department.

Vineet Goyal, Additional Commissioner of Police and CISCO West Bengal already made aware all concerned departments with specific methodology to pre-empt such attacks in public and private infrastructure.

To spread further awareness, the department had issued an advisory note on awareness and preventive measures on Petya/Petwrap ransomware attacks.

The same note had already been circulated to all the departments of the state government for the further actions to be taken.

According to the guidelines, people are requested not to click on the links in e-mails received from unknown senders.

The guideline also urges people to apply all Microsoft Windows patches including MS17-010 that patches

the Eternal Blue Vulnerability. Users will also have to

make sure that antivirus software is installed in every system with its auto update on and is also updated to the latest version.

The guideline also instructs to ensure taking a backup of data to some external disk on a regular basis. Avoid login to computer with administrative privileges.

Work with user account that has standard user privileges and not administrative privileges, the instruction says.