Victoria’s State Police have confirmed that all Speed and Red Light Cameras across the state have been infected with ransomware, believed to be a strain of the WannaCry Ransomware that has been dominating the news over the past month due to its rapid, and high profile distribution. Just last week it had also caused a Honda motor vehicle production plant in Sayama, Japan, to be shut down until the infection could be properly contained and removed.

A Victorian Police spokesperson initially announced on Friday that just over 50 of their cameras were infected, but have since revealed that this has spread to all road safety cameras in the state. It has been decided that 8,000 tickets issued since June 6 will be suspended, and no further tickets will be issued until they are confident the infection has been removed. WannaCry typically spreads by exploiting a flaw in the SMB file sharing protocol in order to carry out its attack. On this occasion however, it has been revealed that the infection began when a maintenance worker unwittingly connected an infected USB device directly into the camera system.

Unfortunately, this is a common way for infections to find their way into a network in the first instance, and truly highlights the need to be ever vigilant, carry out safe email & file transfer practices, and limit the use of server & other key infrastructure systems by Users wherever possible – in order to limit the chances of infection by human error.

If you feel that your business systems could be vulnerable to a WannaCry or a similar Ransomware attack, contact the Altitude Innovations Team to conduct a full Risk Assessment of your protection and recovery systems.