Railwire Hacked - WannaCry Ransomware Attacked on Google's Railwire Free WIFI service

eScan Security Firm Claims that WannaCry [Ransomware] Affects Google's Railwire Free WiFi Service

Highlights :-

• Madhya Pradesh found Highly affected by Ransomware.
• eScan Report suggested India is among worst-affected country.
• eScan has warned users to be careful while using public wifi.

Ransomware, a malicious piece of software that locks files on a system and demands for a price in order to restore the normal functionality, have been on the rise in the recent past.

The smart city dream is making everyone enthusiastic. However, this comes with security breaches and malware attacks that can have a detrimental effect on the entire nation. Public Wi-Fi networks are not very safe as they may seem. Even if they have a security password or OTP, there is sharing of data which is constantly happening via these platforms. This means your data is at risk and you may become an easy target to cybercrime.

WannaCry ransomware cyber-attacks took the world by storm last week and a new report from eScan, a antivirus and content security firm, has now claimed that India was among the countries that were worst affected by the cyber-attacks. While the report has highlighted the risks associated with using public Wi-Fi, it has also revealed Google and RailTel's RailWire Wi-Fi network as the worst affected ISP in the country from the recent ransomware attacks.

Interestingly, eScan's report says that Madhya Pradesh was the worst-affected region in the country with around 32.63 percent of the total ransomware attacks detected within the country, followed by Maharashtra at 18.84 percent and Delhi at third position with 8.76 percent share. Notably, the report says that RailWire, the free Wi-Fi service launched by RailTel, is the most affected network from WannaCry and other ransomware and has 32.14 percent of the entire share among the networks.

Not only Google's Railwire affected in India by WannaCry Ransomware, there are also big network companies name in the list like Airtel, Tata DOCOMO, BSNL etc. But Railwire also is a big network which is affected by WannaCry.

"We have every reason to believe that majority of the ransomware attacks which happened during the last week, within India, would have been averted had Railtel implemented the stop-gap measure of blocking SMB traffic," eScan said in its report.

eScan has advised users to exercise caution before using RailTel's free Wi-Fi service or any free Wi-Fi service for that matter. The report points out that while the government is installing free Wi-Fi spots, it needs to validate the internal security of these networks.

There is no doubt that the advisory issued by the firm eScan does make complete sense and users need to be careful while using free Wi-Fi networks. There is no such thing as free lunch and maybe same rule now applies for wireless Internet networks as well. 

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