Shivamogga, May 17: The ransomware infection, which has created havoc across the world, hit the laptop of a computer science lecturer of PES Institute of Engineering and Management here on Tuesday.
Arjun U., serving as an associate professor, said that the files in his laptop were found encrypted in the morning and had become inaccessible. The message demanding 300 U.S. dollars for unfreezing the laptop also appeared on the screen when he tried to open the files.
Mr. Arjun said that he had a back-up of the data and was secure and added that he would get the system formatted.
Commenting on the incident, Superintendent of Police Abhinav Khare said that the police will collect information from Mr. Arjun and the cybercrime wing of the Police Department will conduct a probe in this regard.
Meanwhile, all critical infrastructure, including data centres and applications, related to government data, have remained safe from the WannaCry attack even as efforts to plug any possible vulnerabilities continued on Tuesday.
With this, several sites that were shut down or access remained partial since “patching” work had been taken up, are back, sources said, adding that even during patching work, end users had not been affected.
“We are safe and have taken all necessary steps to protect our critical infrastructure,” said sources in the Department of e-Governance.
Patching work in some sites continued on Tuesday as well. On Friday, Microsoft had released patches to prevent the virus from accessing the networks.
Sources, however, said that notifications have been sent across all government departments to continue to be wary of anonymous emails.
“Specific instructions have been given to officials not to open suspicious mails and share them in the system. Though we were not affected by the ransomware attack, it has, however, created awareness among the officials and public to be wary of such a situation.”
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