Supervisor Elham AbolFateh
Editor in Chief Mohamed Wadie

Ransomware Virus Hits One of Egypt’s Largest Publishing Houses


Mon 02 Aug 2021 | 01:22 PM
H-Tayea

One of Egypt's largest publishing houses, which is more than 135 years old, was hit by a massive ransomware cyber-attack that led to the loss of electronic copies of reference books.

A team of experts from the Ministry of Communications in Cairo arrived at the publishing house headquarters to know the reason for such cyber-attacks in Egypt.

In exclusive statements to SEE. News, a number of the publishing house officials said that the malicious virus disrupted the printing of one of the corporation-affiliated newspapers last Wednesday.

They emphasized that had it not been for old computers that were not connected to the Internet, the publishing house's huge book heritage would have been lost.

Egypt was one of the top 20 worst affected countries by a massive ransomware cyber-attack, which has spread across the world.

More than 45,000 attacks have been recorded in 74 countries, according to researchers at Kaspersky Lab, a Russian multinational cybersecurity and anti-virus provider.

The malware, which encrypts all data by exploiting a vulnerability in Microsoft software, demands users to pay $300 worth of cryptocurrency Bitcoin as a condition to retrieve their files. In three days, the price would be doubled; and in seven days, the files would be gone forever, according to the message triggered by the malware.