ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court (IHC) administration has alerted its branches against an imminent threat of malicious software that may hack the judicial and administration record from the official computers.

Ransomware is a type of malware from crypto virology that threatens to publish the victim’s data or perpetually block access to it unless a ransom is paid.

While some simple ransomware may lock the system in a way which is not difficult for a knowledgeable person to reverse, more advanced malware uses a technique called cryptoviral extortion in which it encrypts the victim’s files, making them inaccessible, and demands a ransom to decrypt them.

According to a circular issued by the IHC additional registrar information technology, “a virus attack named ‘Ransomware’ has been launched worldwide on microsoft operating system, especially Windows 7 and 10, which encrypts data and the attacker demands ransom from the user to restore the same.”

In order to protect “valuable data” from the virus attack, the IHC administration suggested to create backup in Z-Drive of computers.

The registrar office also restrained officials from plugging USB in computers, sharing data using email or through local network to install or add new plugins in browser and avoiding opening unnecessary websites or unauthentic web-links.

The registrar office circulated the alert to the chief justice secretariat, private secretaries of judges of the IHC, member inspection team, all additional registrars, deputy registrars and assistant registrars of all branches.

In the cryptoviral extortion attack, recovering the files without the decryption key is an intractable problem and difficult to trace digital currencies such as Ukash or Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency are used for the ransoms, making tracing and prosecuting the perpetrators difficult.

Ransomware attacks are typically carried out using a Trojan that is disguised as a legitimate file that the user is tricked into downloading or opening when it arrives as an email attachment.

However, one high-profile example, “WannaCry worm” travelled automatically between computers without the user interaction.

Starting from around 2012, the use of ransomware scams has grown internationally.

There were 181.5 million Ransomware attacks in the first six months of 2018 - a 229pc increase over the corresponding period in 2017.

Published in Dawn, December 29th, 2019