Services of news agency Press Trust of India (PTI) were crippled for hours on Saturday night as hackers broke into the servers.
The services, however, were resumed on Sunday morning.
“The computer servers suffered a massive ransomware attack, disrupting operations and the delivery of news to hundreds of subscribers across India for several hours before they were restored after an all-night effort by engineers,” a PTI statement said.
Quoting unnamed sources, news agency IANS reported that “no ransom was paid”.
“The engineers worked through the night to restore the services by Sunday morning,”.
The ransomware was identified as LockBit that encrypted data and applications, crippling the news delivery to subscribers.
LockBit functions as ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS).
Cybersecurity firm Kaspersky identifies LockBit ransomware as malicious software which has designed to block user access to computer systems in exchange for a ransom.
LockBit is a new ransomware attack in a long line of extortion cyber attacks.
“Notable past targets include organisations in the United States, China, India, Indonesia, Ukraine,” Kaspersky further stated.
“Additionally, various countries throughout Europe (France, the UK, Germany) have seen attacks,” Kaspersky added.
