Indiabulls Hit With Ransomware, Critical Data Hacked; How To Prevent Ransomware Attack?

India’s leading financial services provider: Indiabulls has been hit with ransomware, and critical data related to financial transactions have been hacked.

Which is this ransomware, and how you can prevent such attacks?

Sophos, a leading IT security company has shared some insights into how we can prevent such attacks. 

Indiabulls Ransomware Attack: 24 Hours Deadline

Indiabulls is under siege by CLOP, a ransomware that has hacked critical data related to customers and financial data of Indiabulls.

The hackers have been provided with 24 hours deadline to meet their demands, else all these data will be released on dark web, and sold for money.

Since Indiabulls is into the data-sensitive niche of financial services, share trading, housing loans and more, the information hacked by the ransomware hackers can be critical.

Bleeping Computers have posted a blog on this matter, wherein they have informed that the hackers have uploaded screenshots of some data, which are under siege in this attack.

This includes four spreadsheets related to the Indiabulls Pharmaceuticals and Indiabulls Housing Finance Limited subsidiaries and more

Indiabulls has informed that the ransomware attack is over, and they have restored their systems.

A company spokesperson said, “Our digital risk monitoring service provider (CloudSec) informed us that there has been an attempt to penetrate our peripheral systems. The information being leaked by these threat actors is not sensitive in nature. All data and information pertaining to our customers is safe and securely placed. We have successfully restored all the affected systems through our encrypted data backup storage. Each system is functioning and operating normally.”

How To Prevent Ransomware Attack?

We asked Sophos, a leading cybersecurity company on tips to avoid and prevent such ransomware attacks.

Here are the pointers which one should be aware:

• Check that you have a full inventory of all devices connected to your network and that any security software you use on them is up to date

• Always install the latest security updates, as soon as practicable, on all the devices on your network

• Be cautious about unsolicited attachments. Crooks rely on the dilemma that you can’t tell if the file is the one you want until you open it. If in doubt leave it out.
• Don’t give yourself more login power than you need. Don’t stay logged in as an administrator any longer than necessary and avoid browsing, opening documents or other regular work activities while you have administrator rights.

• Keep regular backups of your most important and current data on an offline storage device as this is the best way to avoid having to pay a ransom when affected by ransomware 

• Administrators should enable multi-factor authentication on all management systems that support it, to prevent attackers disabling security products during an attack

• There is no silver bullet to security, and a layered security model is the best practice all businesses need to implement