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3 maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 21 APRIL 2021 NEWS CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 On Monday night, Secretary General Francis Zammit Di- mech revealed the party's IT sys- tems and data bases were target- ed in a cyber attack. Posting on the dark web, the hackers gave the PN 240 hours to "communicate and cooper- ate" with them, or else the valua- ble documents will be published on the internet. By 6pm yesterday, there were eight days, 11 hours and 36 min- utes to run until the deadline runs out. "We have company financial data, salary payments, employ- ees' personal documents, bank- ing, private client data, payment documents and much more," the hackers said. They also posted a number of documents, including a spread- sheet appearing to show pay- roll details for Media.link pro- ductions in 2014, the ID card, passport and bank details of a woman from St Julians, as well as other documents they have already hacked. The cyber criminals also warned that if their demands are not met, they would be carrying out a DDoS attack, which would take the PN's website offline due to overwhelming traffic. A magisterial inquiry by Victor Axiak is underway, and police have visited the party's head- quarters as part of their investi- gation. The Avvadon malware The Avaddon malware cam- paign began in early June 2020. The malware is delivered and spreads mainly using phishing emails containing a malicious attachment. Avaddon is a cryptolocker ran- somware written in C++ that is best known for encrypting files and changing the file extension to .avdn. The ransomware also deletes the volume shadow cop- ies and other system backups. Since the ransomware uses strong encryption algorithms like AES256 and RSA2048, no decryp- tor is available and it is impossible to decrypt the file without the key that was used to encrypt it. This ransomware is sold similar to other Ransomware-as-a-ser- vice(RaaS) like REvil. Thus, even someone with limited technical background can become an "af- filiate" to spread the malware. In return, the profit gets shared between the threat actor and the affiliate. Cyber criminals give PN ultimatum to 'communicate and cooperate' 13 new cases of COVID-19 were registered on Tuesday, the health ministry has said. 282,841 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered until Monday. Of these, 87,770 were second doses. Total recoveries stand at 29,065 while total cases registered stand at 30,039. There are 563 active COVID-19 cases. Two deaths were registered in the last 24-hours. Two men aged 57 and 81 at Mater Dei Hospital. The total number of deaths is 411. 1,584 swab tests were carried out in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of swabs to 849,165. New COVID-19 cases drop to 13, lowest daily figure since summer The Avaddon Ransomware page on the dark web has a section dedicated to its attack on the PN