Make upgrades free or face more ransomware attacks in SA – expert
South Africans are at greater risk from cyber-attacks because of the high cost of downloading upgrades across the Internet.
Pieter Erasmus, an IT security strategist who works in association with Moyo Business Advisory, said because numerous of these upgrades ran into multiple megabytes of data, many users often had to choose between leaving enough data for browsing and for email or downloading upgrades from Microsoft.
“I think internet service providers like Mweb, Telkom and Afrihost should come to the party and not count upgrades as part of a data bundle but rather make it a free service.”
The strategist’s comments come after a ransomware attack on Friday which reportedly affected more than 100,000 organisations in 150 countries, according to Europe’s law enforcement agency Europol.
The malware, which locks files and asks for payment to unlock them, hit businesses including FedEx, Spanish telecoms firm Telefonica, carmaker Renault, German rail operator Deutsche Bahn, and British hospitals.
Erasmus, whose company services a large number of JSE listed companies, said the threat was far from over.
“It would be a relatively simple matter to alter the code of the malware in order to circumvent the temporary solution that has been found to stop the current attack,” he said.
He said it was entirely possible that companies who had been closed for the weekend might arrive at work today (Monday) to find that their computers had been infected.
“While this is by far the largest attack that has ever taken place, malware has been an ongoing problem for some time. Part of our job is to ensure that our clients are fully prepared to defend themselves against such attacks not only by ensuring that their software is up to date but also to protect themselves against so-called phishing attacks where hackers acquire personal information which they can use in malware attacks.”
Erasmus said at between US$300 and US$600 per computer to have the ransomware lock unblocked, it was obviously a hugely profitable enterprise.
“Once the data on a PC has been encrypted by the malware, the only way to unlock it is to pay the ransom however odious that may be.
“By far the best solution is to be prepared – download security updates as soon as they become available. Microsoft should also make updates available for older operating systems such as XP and Vista which are still in wide use and always use the latest version of Windows software as it becomes available,” Erasmus said.
Professor SH (Basie) von Solms, Director of the Centre for Cyber Security in the Academy for Computer Science and Software Engineering at the University of Johannesburg, said because cybercrime was not a reportable crime nobody actually knew the exact amount of money that was ripped off.
“Because we do not have compulsory reporting of such incidents (cybercrime), and because so many are swept under the carpet and cannot be included in statistics it may actually be more than the two to three billion rand a year figure that is commonly quoted for South Africa.”
Erasmus said when his company started working with new clients they found that even the most basic principles if IT security were being flagrantly ignored such as opening e-mails form unknown senders or clicking hot links on web sites that installed malware on computers that gave hackers access to the entire network.
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