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Ukraine Scrambles To Contain New Cyber Threat After NotPetya Attack (reuters.com)
The Ukrainian software firm used as part of last week's global cyber attack warned on Wednesday that all computers sharing a network with its infected accounting software had been compromised by hackers. From a report: The attack used a virus, dubbed "NotPetya" by some experts, to take down thousands of computers in dozens of countries, disrupting shipping and businesses. A video released by Ukrainian police showed masked men in combat fatigues and armed with assault rifles raiding the offices of software developer Intellect Service late on Tuesday, after cyber security researchers said they had found a "backdoor" written into some of the updates issued by its M.E. Doc accounting software. M.E. Doc is used by 80 percent of Ukrainian companies and installed on around 1 million computers in the country. Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said police had blocked a second cyber attack from servers hosting the software.
Why is "M.E. Doc used by 80 percent of Ukrainian companies?" Since when is software a regional/national thing? It's not like those companies can't choose whatever accounting software they wish from anywhere in the world. How did this M.E. Doc establish such a monopoly in the country? It's bizarre, right? Is this some kind of Ukrainian-nationalism, where everyone only wants to support their own? (Yet they still choose to run Windows, which I'm sure has far fewer Ukrainian developers than any Linux-based operating system!) I really can't say that I feel bad for the individuals, but I feel bad for the country itself, since surely its economy doesn't need this kind of a blow right now.