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Near miss: Yukon government repelled ransomware attacks

‘We were lucky that it was caught in time’
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IT staff at the Yukon government has had to repel at least three ransomware hacking attempts since 2016. (123RF)

Pierre Chauvin | Special to the News

Information technology staff at the Yukon government repelled ransomware hacking attempts in 2016 and 2017, documents obtained by the News show.

Emails obtained through Access to Information show bureaucrats expressed their relief that two different ransomware infections were rapidly quashed.

“(Redacted) was infected by Ransomware (“Zepto”) in August/2016 - it encrypted 18,000 files on one of our network drives before we shut it down, wiped the drive and restored prior backup,” wrote Health and Social Services finance director Peter Hayes in a January 2017 email to information and communications technology, a branch of the Department of Highways and Public Works.

“We were lucky that it was caught in time.”

There was a third infection attempt in June 2016 but the email describes the ransomware as so poorly made it failed to infect the computer.

Ransomware programs hold hostage a user’s data for ransom.

When an unsuspecting user clicks on a malicious link, the ransomware is downloaded and encrypts the user’s files rendering them useless unless a ransom in paid, allowing for the data to be decrypted.

“The good news is that we were able to isolate those (infected computers) and in every case we stopped them before they were able to replicate broadly across the network,” said Michael Johnson, manager for data and application support at ICT.

In all three cases no ransoms were paid, no data was lost, and no information left the government networks, he said.

“(Staff) have been trained that if a machine appears to be infected, they’re taken off the network so (the ransomware) is not able to replicate itself.”

Those attacks can be fairly difficult for large organizations to remedy, said Ivan Beschastnikh, an assistant professor of computer science at UBC.

Companies can rely on software to constantly scan computers for ransomware, but that’s only one part of the solution. Companies can also “sanitize” links, turning them into regular text to make it harder for users to simply click on them, he said.

In a previous email Hayes asked ICT staffers for their advice on buying ransomware protection, suggesting licences for Malwarebyte, which costs $50,000 for three years. The government ended up buying Malwarebyte.

While such software can appear expensive at first, it’s less expensive than dealing with a ransomware infection, Beschastnikh said.

“(If during) one such attack (the government) loses data that it took them a decade to collect for example, then it’s a major loss and recovering that kind of data might be impossible in some cases,” he said.

“I think the reason a lot of organizations are afraid is because the potential for damage can be quite high.”

The Yukon government has also been running campaigns to train government employees to recognize suspicious links, Johnson said. As part of that campaign harmless emails with suspicious-looking links are sent to employees — and those who do click on the links get a message informing them they fell for it.

“We’ve had great success,” said Johnson. “We have a fairly astute workforce that hasn’t fallen for these.”

Major companies and governments across the globe have been struggling with ransomware attacks for the past couple of years. The Guardian reported in May 2017 that over 45,000 attacks in 100 countries have taken place. Among those affected last year was the U.K.’s National Health Service, which in some cases led to hospitals being unable to treat patients and use equipment such as X-ray machines.

Large-scale infections could also lead to service disruptions here.

“Whenever we have to isolate those machines and take them offline, there’s a potential to impact services or deadlines for those people,” Johnson said.

But for the most part, the government doesn’t run the type of specialized computers found in a hospital, he said, and employees can use a virtual desktop environment to continue working.

But not everybody is as lucky. IT World Canada reported that a Canadian company ended up paying $425,000 in June 2017 to get its data back.

For Beschastnikh that business model of attacks is here to stay. Ransomware relies on the availability of cryptocurrencies for untraceable ransom payments and the high-grade security of cryptography to make it impossible to decrypt the data without the encryption key.

“It’s the combination of the two that makes (ransomware) very potent,” he said.

“I don’t see it going away.”

In the end those three attempts shows the YG is able to handle ransomeware, Beschastnikh said.

“I’m impressed they were able to deal with it so well.”

Contact the Yukon News at editor@yukon-news.com