‘Bladabindi’ is a virus you need to be wary of if you live in India, since this cyber bug is wreaking havoc in the country and has a high potential of compromising you personal details. The state-run Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) has issued a warning about this virus and has also suggested some countermeasures against it.
‘Bladabindi’ has the potential of infecting the Microsoft Windows operating system and is mainly spreading through USB flash drives or pen drives as they’re more commonly known in India. It steals sensitive user information from infected computers and is even capable to propagating further malware downloads to provide remote attackers with backdoor access.
CERT-In has said that the Bladabindi virus can use up to 12 aliases so as to conceal its real identity, and moreover, it can be created easily through a publicly available malicious hacker tool. While bypassing firewalls is one of its properties, it has been reported to steal your name, country, Windows username, OS version and more importantly, saved passwords on Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.
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The agency has suggested a few measures that can be taken in order to ensure that you’re not affected by ‘Bladabindi.’ Firstly, a complete system scan needs to be performed with any antivirus software which is up to date. Secondly, you should also disable the auto-run functionality in Windows and scan your USB drives before opening them.
These simple measures can keep you away from the ‘Bladabindi’ hacking virus, but to stay safe on the Internet, you should also be cautious about the legitimacy of the links you’re clicking, the attachments you’re downloading and sites you’re visiting.