The Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, has alerted members of the public that a cybercrime group has perfected a scheme to deliver ransomware to targeted organizational networks.

The Commission in a statement signed by its Director of Public Affairs, Dr. Ikechukwu Adinde urged the public to be vigilant to avoid falling victims of cyber attacks.

The NCC said the new ransomware uncovered by security experts has been categorised, by the Nigerian Computer Emergency Response Team’s (ngCERT), as high-risk and critical. It noted that according to the ngCERT advisory, the criminal group is said to have been mailing out USB thumb drives to many organisations in the hope that recipients will plug them into their PCs and install the ransomware on their networks.

While businesses are being targeted, criminals could soon begin sending infected USB drives to individuals, the Commission explained further.

Describing how the cybercrime group runs the ransomeware, the NCC noted that the ngCERT advisory says the USB drives contain so-called ‘BadUSB’ attacks.

The Commission said: “The BadUSB exploits the USB standards versatility and allows an attacker to reprogram a USB drive to emulate a keyboard to create keystrokes and commands on a computer. It then installs malware prior to the operating system booting, or spoofs a network card to redirect traffic.