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Bad Rabbit ransomware attack bites Europe

Russia, Ukraine and Turkey are among the nations that have fallen victim to Bad Rabbit, which appears to be related to Petya.

Zoey Chong Reporter
Zoey is CNET's Asia News Reporter based in Singapore. She prefers variety to monotony and owns an Android mobile device, a Windows PC and Apple's MacBook Pro all at the same time. Outside of the office, she can be found binging on Korean variety shows, if not chilling out with a book at a café recommended by a friend.
Zoey Chong
2 min read
Petya ransomware cyber attack

The latest ransomware attack is believed to be a variant of Petya.

Alexander Ryumin/TASS via Getty Images

A new ransomware infection has struck several European nations, ZDNet reported Tuesday. 

Called Bad Rabbit, the bug is thought to be a variant of Petya. Infected systems direct people to a page where they are told to pay a ransom of 0.05 bitcoin ($277, £209, AU$360) to recover their files, according to ZDNet. Victims are given 41 hours to make a payment. After that, the ransom rises.

Bad Rabbit joins WannaCry and GoldenEye in a string of cyberattacks that have struck over the past year. In May, over 200,000 computers across 150 countries were locked down by WannaCry. Less than two months later, GoldenEye followed, shutting down companies including a Cadbury chocolate factory in Australia.  

So far, Russia is most badly hit by Bad Rabbit with over half the victims in that country, including the Moscow-based news agency Interfax, Reuters reported. Ukraine, Bulgaria, Turkey and Japan have also been affected, causing systems to fail at Ukraine's Kiev Metro and the Odessa international airport, for example.

The way the infection has spread across critical infrastructure suggests it was a "well-coordinated" move, Reuters said. Nothing major has been reported in the US yet, although the government isn't taking any chances. The US Department of Homeland Security issued a warning Tuesday on Bad Rabbit. The warning advises against paying ransoms and, instead, encourages victims to report infections to the FBI through the government's Internet Crime Complaint Center.

Twitter users have noticed that the creators of Bad Rabbit made references to characters from " Game of Thrones ," including "Drogon" and "Grey Worm," hence suggesting a GoT fan could be behind the latest attack.

For more details, read ZDNet's story.

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