coe-staff: RansomWare Threat Petya or NotPetya: on Windows Computers (6/28)

[Jeff Woodbury]

All,

The spread of a malicious RansomWare attack called "Petya" or "NotPetya" has been reported in industry and popular press over the past 2 days. It has, for the most part affected, European government and companies, but is now making inroads in the US. The attack spreads among Windows computers that have not recently updated to protect against this vulnerability. It uses the same  vulnerability as the "WannaCrypt" used in May, so the first line of defense is to keep your work and personal computers up to date with Windows and Operating System and software updates.  (Please note this vulnerability does not affect MacOS or Linux computers).

The Petya/NotPetya RansomWare is also being spread via email attachments, so please be cautious when receiving email attachments opening attachments.

As with the WannaCrypt RansomWare, COEIT has applied rules to protect windows computer that we manage and are connected to the campus network. However COEIT does not have the ability to apply these rules to Windows computers that are not on the campus network or that are "unmanaged"(i.e. your personally owned computers or those that were not configured and deployed by COEIT).

Therefore we need to ask users to run Windows updates and to apply the patches that Microsoft made available in March and April of this year. You can do this on computers with Windows 8 or earlier by going to the "Control Panel" and clicking on "Windows Updates". For Windows 10 computers, go to "Settings" and then to "Update & Security" to check for updates.

Remember to restart your computer(s) after updates have been successfully applied.

If you have any questions about this issue, please write us at coe-support at ithelp.uoregon.edu

Here are a couple of links on the Petya/NotPetya RansomWare:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/27/petya-ransomware-attack-strikes-companies-across-europe
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/06/petya-ransomware-outbreak-goes-global/?
?


Sincerely,


Jeffrey Woodbury, PhD
Director of Technology, College of Education
University of Oregon
jeffreyw at uoregon.edu


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