Its been couple of weeks since the ransomware attack of Wannacry virus has shaken the cyber security world. Many devices across the world were affected and it became a global news. A blogpost by eScan antivirus company claimed that the RailTel’s Railwire network at railway stations are the worst hit by Ransomware attack and it was followed by couple of media stories based on the same blogpost. Here we would like to clarify that the blogpost is completely misleading and paints a false picture.

We are sharing few facts that will help you to understand why the report is misleading:

• Usually ransomware spreads via phishing emails or as a result of visiting a website that contains a malicious program. RailTel being an ISP, abided by DoT / Govt of India Laws, cannot block any website without getting DoT instruction or track emails as it is breach of user privacy.
• Furthermore when we talk about RailTel’s Railwire WiFi service at the Railway Stations, please note that the Wannacry Ransomware majorly affects windows operating system and majority of the Railwire users access the internet via Android/ iOS phones.
• Another point to note, every device that connects to RailTel’s Railwire Wi-Fi facility functions in isolation mode and hence even if one device is affected by a malware it will not spread to any other devices on the network.

The blogpost does not provide any details of how they arrived at their findings and does a poor job of informing users on how they can protect themselves from malware.

RailTel’s Railwire Wi-Fi is designed to provide a stable, reliable and secure experience to the users and complies with all the measures as per DoT rules.

It is advised to have endpoint security solution to be deployed in the device which can protect against these kinds of attack rather than the ISP (RailTel in this case) who is just providing a platform for people to connect to the internet. We would like to reiterate that RailTel’s RailWire Wi-Fi at railway stations is one of the most secure public Wi-Fi service that is available in the country today and there is no basis for this report.