it's been carried out by a virus called petya.t locks into systems and demands $300 and bitcoin to regain access. we talked about the severity of the attack and what can be done to prevent future breaches. chris: the real story here is the evolution of ransomware. if we did see a global -- we did see a global ransomware attack, but the way we have seen this attack work, it's gone from single instances where you users would get phished to wear now you have hybrid attacks. this ransomware attack used an exploit that we saw a few weeks ago, but it's now using different types of exploits to go after user credentials and attack machines that aren't necessarily unpatched. that was the case in want to cry -- wannacry. we are now seeing the evolution of ransomware where they are trying to move from individuals to trying to infect entire networks. that's what we started to see and now we see the next step of the evolution here with this. momentso in this very what should companies be doing , to protect themselves? chris: the number one thi

. >> reporter: while some think they have been infected by the headline grabbing "wannacry" or "petyansomware virus, this person of best buy says most have been duped by malicious looking pop-ups that are simply ransomware look-alikes. >> most commonly what we see, they are just the pop-ups that take advantage of the notoriety of the big name ones. >> reporter: he says it's relatively easy for a pop-up to temporarily lock your computer in hopes of scaring you into paying up or, works, handing over access -- or, worse, handing over access to your machine. >> usually best thing to do just reboot. >> reporter: try force quitting any open controls by hitting control-alt-delete. she smelled a scam so she brought her computer to best buy where they fixed it in minutes. now she is sharing a message of her own. >> if i can prevent one person from paying $149 then i'll be happy. >> reporter: in general, experts recommend against paying even if you are the victim of a real ransomware attack. in these days, everyone should keep files backed up on an external drive. the ftc recommends backing up

we also believe that what we are starting to see here with petya is a move to see what is possible. they may be trying to infect entire organizations whose operations can be disrupted by these attacks. we don't think we've seen the end of the movie area we are seeing the beginning chapters of the movie. emily: how does the movie progress? how does the movie end? chris: i never like to predict the ending of the movie. we do expect to see more attacks like this. it we do expect the ransomware will be using other forms of propagation, using other forms of stealing credentials, which is what we're starting to see here. we expect they are going to test different methodologies and see which combinations work best for them. in this particular case, many of the bitcoin wallets were ardcoded into the software itself. we've only seen small amounts, less than $50,000 worth of payment going to those accounts so far. we expect to see this continue to evolve. we think this is something hat is just beginning. we've got a lot more of these kinds of attacks that we will experience over the coming mo

the virus known as petya locke's computers and demands $300 in payments to gain access.pp and adia company danish shipping giant have also been struck. the attack is similar to last months rent some strike, using -- last month's ransomware strike. , itsis invention today main mechanism force -- mechanism for spreading is a leak in essay exploit -- a leaked nsa exploit. that is not the only mechanism that the infection uses to spread, but that is the primary mechanism. it is a reminder to companies that just because the earlier infection was stopped, thanks to some careless coding by the hackers, doesn't mean that the future ones will be as easy to stop. it looks like the attackers took some more care in preparing this set of malware. virus advanced from russia and ukraine, went through europe, ended up in the u.s., with reports it is moving through india and china now. >> so far there hasn't been that widespread of an impact in asia. i think that is partly because there isn't a stringent requirements on asian companies as there is in other parts of the world. anchor: sen