Ransomware known as Petya seems to have re-emerged to affect computer systems across Europe, causing issues primarily in Ukraine, Russia, England and India, a Swiss government information technology agency said on Tuesday.”There have been indications of late that Petya is in circulation again, exploiting the SMB (Server Message Block) vulnerability,” the Swiss Reporting and Analysis Centre for Information Assurance (MELANI) said in an e-mail.It said it had no information that Swiss companies had been impacted, but said it was following the situation. The Petya virus was blamed for disrupting systems in 2016.Russia’s top oil producer Rosneft said a large-scale cyber attack hit its servers on Tuesday, with computer systems at some banks and the main airport in neighboring Ukraine also disrupted.

A major ransomware attack on Tuesday hit computers at Russia’s biggest oil company, the country’s banks, Ukraine’s international airport as well as global shipping firm A.P. Moller-Maersk.Moscow-based cyber security firm Group IB said hackers had exploited code developed by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) whoch was leaked and then used in the WannaCry ransomware attack that caused global disruption in May.One of the victims of Tuesday’s cyber attack, a Ukrainian media company, said its computers were blocked and it had received a demand for $300 worth of the Bitcoin crypto-currency to restore access to its files.”If you see this text, then your files are no longer accessible, because they have been encrypted. Perhaps you are busy looking for a way to recover your files, but don’t waste your time. Nobody can recover your files without our decryption service,” the message said, according to a screenshot posted by Ukraine’s Channel 24.

Hamnen i Göteborg har tillsammans med en rad banker i Ukraina, transportföretag i Danmark och Nederländerna samt en rysk oljejätte drabbats av en cyberattacker. – Det är helt utslaget, säger kommunikationschefen Annika Hilmersson.Någon gång efter lunch slogs de digitala systemen ut helt på på Göteborgs hamn. Fram till att hamnen stängde vid 16 har lossning av containrar i största möjliga mån fått ske manuellt.– För oss är det oerhört allvarligt eftersom vi måste gå in i en manuell operation och inte kan ge den service vi vill för våra kunder, säger Annika Hilmersson, kommunikationschef på APM Terminals, som ägs av transportföretaget Maersk.Uppmaningen som kommunicerats ut till hamnens kunder är att inte komma dit med gods under dagen och morgondagen.– Det är helt utslaget i containerterminalen. En felsökningsprocess pågår men vi vet inte hur lång tid det kommer ta, säger Annika Hilmersson.

Companies across the globe are reporting that they have been struck by a major ransomware cyber-attack.British advertising agency WPP is among those to say its IT systems have been disrupted as a consequence.Ukrainian firms, including the state power company and Kiev’s main airport were among the first to report issues.The Chernobyl nuclear power plant has also had to monitor radiation levels manually after Windows-based sensors were shut down.Experts suggest the malware is taking advantage of the same weaknesses used by the Wannacry attack last month.”It appears to be a variant of a piece of ransomware that emerged last year,” said computer scientist Prof Alan Woodward.