IHC warns staff of cyber-attack threat

High court directs employees not to plug USBs into office computers

ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court (IHC) has warned all its employees of a possible computer virus attack named “Ransomware”, which has been launched worldwide to target machines running on Microsoft’s Windows operating systems.

The virus specially targets computers running on Windows 7 and 10 and “encrypts the data and [then] the attacker demands[s] ransom from the user to restore the same,” read a circular issued by the high court’s additional registrar on Saturday.

The warning, issued from the IHC’s computer network security team, barred users from plugging USBs into any of the official computers and surfing unnecessary websites or opening unauthentic web-links as well as installing new plugins in internet browsers.

It also asked the users to create backup of the important official data in Z-drive of their computers and share the data by using email or through local network.

A “ransomware” virus can be spread to computers through attachments or links in phishing emails, by infected web sites by means of a drive-by download or via infected USB sticks.