In today’s world, the USA is considered one of the superpower countries which have the world’s best facilities in everything from medical, transportation to military services.US military is considered as one of the most advanced militaries across the world.
All these assumptions were questioned by an attack that was performed at one of the naval bases of the USA in 2019. This is a type of ransomware attack which possibly entered into the network via a phishing email in which a malicious link is embedded and was clicked by one of the navy professionals. Once the link is clicked it get access to critical network files and encrypt them. These encrypted files disrupt operations like CCTV cameras, door access control systems, and other critical monitoring systems for more than 30 hours. On further analysis of the attack, it was found that the malware which encrypted the file in the database was of RUYK variant.
The location of the naval base was undisclosed due to security reasons. Higher officials alert other maritime bases to check their system for any type of suspicious activity.
FBI already warned the US maritime before the attack that it is a chance of a major cyberattack on the port facilities in the month of November-December 2019. Instead of warning US coast guard was unable to stop the attack and suffered from major disruptions.
Conclusion :
As from the officials, the attack was already predicted by the FBI but still, US marines took it in a “not serious” manner, which made them lose a worth of $14M, demanded by the hackers to restore their original server sessions.
Phishing played as a major part here to initialize the attack, if officials could have examined the electronic message properly, it wouldn’t have been like this.
