Renewed attacks wreaked havoc around the globe on Wednesday crippling thousands of computers, disrupting operations at ports from Mumbai to Los Angeles and halting production in factories reportedly in several countries. The virus this time attacked establishments in Ukraine on Tuesday infecting computers of several government and private establishments.
The malicious system now known as ‘ransom-ware’ lock computers and often demand victims ransom money in bitcoins on threat they would lose their data publicly. More than 30 victims reportedly have paid up following a series of earlier cyber attacks, though the money is not big in which hackers had broken, among others computer system of British hospitals and health services creaking panic all over. Apart from hacking the computer system of National Democratic Committee in the USA prior to last November election allegedly by Russian hackers to interfere in US election, security experts remained skeptical whether extortion is the real goal or they are driven by destructive motives.
Ukraine, this time accused Russia for orchestrating widespread attacks on its computer systems when its relation is bad with the neighbour since the annexation of Crimea in 2014. But Kremlin establishments are also reportedly victims themselves at a time when nobody is sure about the origin of global cyber attacks. Italy and Australia also reported cyber attacks among many others this week.
Now the question is how to develop global technological policing and watchdog system to protect the computer system and high secret information of public and private establishments; which are sensitive to national security and business secret of corporate bodies. Moreover since the hacking of fund from Bangladesh Bank how the government is going to update its cyber security yet remain to be seen.
As cyber attacks are increasingly disrupting businesses and functions of government and private organizations around the world, experts believe computer-producing companies should develop new devices to protect its information storage system. As said before, it has become vitally important for running the today’s virtual world.
For Bangladesh we want that our cyber authorities should draw lessons from recent attacks to protect banks and secret information depository on sensitive matters. Last but not least, relevant people in the government as well as our IT experts must be on high alert to plug every vulnerable point to make our system safe.
