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NotPetya: A Targeted Attack on Ukraine

Posted: July 6th, 2017

By Steven Bay

Steven Bay left Booz Allen Hamilton earlier this year after nine years with the management consulting firm.  He joined BAH in 2007 to work on a contract for the National Security Agency, and in 2011 was transferred to Hawaii to run its local NSA team.  Bay started his career in the Air Force as a Persian Farsi linguist.  He was stationed at Ft. Meade, Maryland where he translated Persian documents and later became a digital network intelligence analyst.  He has launched a cyber consulting firm at ssbaygroup.com.

As the dust settles on last Tuesday’s NotPetya malware outbreak, it is increasingly evident that this was not a ransomware, money-making attack at all; rather it was a targeted, destructive cyberattack against Ukraine. It utilized deception in which it was designed to look like ransomware but wasn’t. It targeted obscure Ukrainian software – yet propagated extremely fast once inside a victimized network, and it did not have any particular intent aside from destroying or damaging victimized systems. 

It was not ransomware

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