Bengaluru, May 15: Banks in Karnataka remained unaffected by the ransomware 'WannaCry' as they strictly adhered to advisory issued by the Union ministry of electronics and information technology and installed latest patch of anti-virus into their computer systems.
While the branch functioning was not hindered, functioning of ATMs across the state was normal.
To achieve this, however, the bank employees had to work overnight on Saturday and Sunday forgoing weekend holiday.
"We were quickly on the job as soon as we received the alert and the staff members worked on Saturday and Sunday. As a result, the business at branches and ATMs is normal on Monday," said MM Chiniwar, general manager of Canara Bank- Bengaluru Circle.
The Computer Emergency Response Team of India (CERT-In) issued the red-coloured critical alert on Saturday to all organisations including banks asking them to take necessary precautionary measures against the malware. The CERT-In is the nodal agency to tackle hacking phishing, and secure defences of the Indian internet domain.
The ransomware was feared to takeover computers remotely, locking them down and demanding a 'ransom' to unlock their systems. The systems using Windows XP was particularly seen vulnerable to the malware.
As the malware was expected to encrypt the hardware disk of a computer before spreading to other systems on local area network (LAN), the banks were asked to install the latest patch of anti-virus.
A senior official in the IT department of State Bank of India said the anti-virus was centrally installed in the bank's headquarters in Mumbai and all 3,300 ATMs in Karnataka were safe. However, some of the ATMs are not dispensing cash thanks to the shortage of cash supply and the officials said this had nothing to do with the malware.
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