KIEV, July 5. /TASS/. Ukraine’s law enforcement officials have put an end to the second wave of the Petya virus throughout the country, that caused breakdowns in the operation of government, large banks and transport companies last week, Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said on Wednesday.

"Special agents of the cyber police department together with employees of the Ukrainian Security Service and the public prosecutor’s office put an end to the second wave of the Petya cyber attack. The climax of the attack was planned for 16:00. The attack was launched at 13:40. Before 15:00, the cyber police blocked the distribution and activation of the virus from the servers of the M.E.DOC information system," he stated in a Facebook post.

On July 4, Ukraine’s police confiscated equipment of the Ukrainian M.E.DOC company that develops the country’s most popular tax administration program. However, according to the head of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry’ s Cyber Police Sergey Demenyuk, the investigative activities were connected with the probe into the first cyber attack. Detectives believe that the virus initially spread through program updates sent by the company. The M.E.DOC officials stated that their servers had been cracked by hackers, and the sent update had not contained any viruses.

On June 27, a global hacker attack involving Petya malware was registered. Experts say that the virus attacked around 80 companies, most of them Ukrainian. In Russia, the virus attacked Rosneft, Bashneft, Mars, Nivea and Mondelez International. The virus blocks the launch of the operating system and demands a ransom of $300 in bitcoins to restore functions and decipher files.