Telangana News

Over the past 10 days, Pakistan-based hackers hacked at least 50 information technology companies, the Society for Cyberabad Security Council (SCSC) comprising Hyderabad's top IT companies and police said.

The information was stolen using 'ransomware' and bitcoins were demanded for handing back the decryption keys. To attack the companies, Pakistani hackers have used servers in Turkey, Somalia and Saudi Arabia, the council added.  

"A few of these attacks have been sorted out, although majority are still being tackled. It is a sudden spurt in ransomware attacks. Almost all the attacks in the last 10 days have originated from Pakistan," said Devraj Wodeyar, head, Cyber Security Forum under the Society of Cyberabad Security Council (SCSC).

The officials even explained the method of attacks saying that, the proxy servers were changed every 5 minutes, but somehow the ethical hackers team managed to nail the location of the actual attackers through IP addresses, the port used and the network node.

The news of attacks in Hyderabad comes days after a Pakistani hackers group recently claimed hacking 7,000 plus Indian websites as `revenge' against the surgical strikes carried out by the Indian Army in bordering areas earlier this month.

Mostly finance companies are hit by cyber attacks in the city. "Majority of these firms approached experts with complaints that their network transactions were not moving. When we investigated and went through the synopsis, we found them to be ransomware attacks launched from Riyadh," an official said.