It was last month, that reports suggested that a section of computers of Andhra Pradesh's police departments were affected by a global cyber attack.
Computers in 18 police units in Chittoor, Krishna, Guntur, Visakhatpatnam and Srikakulam districts were affected, with senior officials saying that the ransomware encrypted data in some police stations.
However, in a latest development, Andhra’s Director General of Police (DGP) revealed that the ransomware may have hit their computers, as some of them were using pirated software.
Speaking to Vijaita Singh from The Hindu, DGP N Sambasiva Rao said, “We were very lucky; the Crime and Criminal Tracking Networks and Systems (CCTNS) and the entire data are well protected. TCS is the system administrator. No single bit of data was infected during the attack. The only thing is that in three-four districts, 30-35 computers out of thousands were affected. One of the reasons was they were using pirated software,” told The Hindu.
He also said that the police did not get any ransom messages.
Rao had told media persons last month that computers using the Windows operating system were hit by the ‘cyber attack’. The police chief's computer with Apple's iOS operating system was safe.
"The impact is minimal as we also keep offline record of FIRs and other documents," the police had assured.
Another officer had said that they were coordinating with the Home Ministry and were taking all precautions to protect the data.
Last month, a global cyber-attack using hacking tools believed to have been created by the US National Security Agency (NSA) infected tens of thousands of computers in nearly 100 countries.
The hackers would encrypt the user’s files after gaining access to the computer, and demand a ‘ransom’ in bitcoins to return access.