The state’s IT department has managed to contain the spread of Locky virus, which is a file-encrypting ransomware. A senior official from the IT department claimed that this ransomware had infected the computer systems at Mantralaya and all the data are now safe. V K Gautam, Principal Secretary, IT department, said that the virus had reportedly affected about 150 computers, most of which were in the Revenue and PWD Department along with some isolated computers in other departments of Mantralaya. These computers have now been isolated and are being sent for forensic tests. All the data on the Maharashtra Local Area Network (Maha LAN) are safe.
According to Gautam, the virus first showed its presence around Friday last week, which probably sneaked into the Maha LAN through a spam mail. After gaining entry into the system, the virus begins encrypting the DOC, PPT or other files into Locky files. When one tries to access these encrypted files, the system asks the user for lock key and then asks to pay for it in Bitcoins for granting access to the files. He also added that the virus is actually very dangerous in the world of finance and corporates, where data related to financial accounts and other sensitive information gets locked and the user is asked to pay for the access his / her own data.
Gautam also added a word of caution for computer users in general and the Mantralaya staff in particular. He said that users need to guard against accessing spam mails of such nature by clicking on to the senders e-mail address to know the real sender and better still use only the official government e-mail Intra-net rather than private e-mails like Gmail, Yahoo and others.
