MOSCOW, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- A new wave of cyber attacks hit multiple corporate networks in Russia, Ukraine, Germany and Turkey, Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab said Tuesday.
"Our observations show that the majority of the attack's victims are located in Russia. We're also registering similar attacks in Ukraine, Turkey and Germany, but on a considerably smaller scale. The malware spreads through a number of compromised websites of Russian media outlets," the company was quoted by Russia Today as saying.
Russia's Interfax news agency, one of the country's largest news outlet and another Internet-based Russian media company were reportedly under the attack.
An international airport and the metro system in Ukraine's capital city Kiev were also affected.
The new cyber virus, dubbed "BadRabbit," demands a ransom payed in Bitcoin for encrypted files, which is set to go up if it is not paid in time, according to Kaspersky.
The ransomware, which seems to be mainly targeting corporate systems, uses similar methods as the Petya malware attack earlier this year, and possible links between the two are still being studied, the company said.
Global cyber security suffered heavy blows in recent months. In June, businesses across the world came under massive cyberattacks with the help of the virus-encryptor Petya, just one month after the WannaCry ransomware outbreak which affected more than 200,000 computers in some 150 countries.
