The Netherlands is under cyber attack. Companies in the ICT sector are asking for government intervention. Marco VISMARA August 4, 2021
The spread of ransomware in the Netherlands is turning into "a national crisis" and "the country's security is in danger", according to the directors of three of the most important cybersecurity companies in the land of tulips: Eye, Hunt & Hackett and Northwave. Speaking to the national media, they called for urgent government intervention. Ransomware attacks, the three experts explain, are more and more numerous and requests for help are too many to be handled by Dutch companies alone. Ransomware is a virus that spreads as a seemingly harmless file or simple email attachment but which once downloaded encrypts files on the system. Sometimes, it is even able to attack systems without the need for user intervention: this is the case of “zero-click” attacks. As always when it comes to criminals, paying the ransom is not the same as having a guarantee that your files will be unlocked - quite the opposite. To try to stem the crisis, law enforcement and cyber security companies have long since joined forces to dismantle the criminal activities related to ransomware. The "No More Ransom" site is an initiative undertaken by the European Cybercrime Center of Europol, the National High Tech Crime Unit of the Dutch police, in collaboration with private partners such as Kaspersky and McAfee. The resources of the site are also available in Italian. The initiative aims to help ransomware victims recover their encrypted data, without having to pay the criminals. Since it is much easier to avoid the threat than to fight it, once the system is infected, the project also intends to educate users about this no longer new cyber threat, as well as the countermeasures that can be taken to prevent it. active infection. The more actors support this project, the better the results will be.
This initiative is open to other parties, both public and private. Furthermore, on the site you can find the keys to decrypt various malware. Even before considering paying the ransom, victims should check out the platform!