Why the WannaCry ransomware threat isn’t over yet, and how you can protect yourself - National according to : Global News

The WannaCry ransomware cyber attack took some of the world's largest economies by surprise. READ MORE: What is the WannaCry ransomware cyber threat? WATCH: Admiral Mike Rogers: No drop in Russian cyber attacks since the electionThe National Security Agency (NSA) reportedly identified the vulnerabilities, which Microsoft released a patch for in March. Researchers with security software maker Avast said they had counted 126,534 ransomware infections in 99 countries, marking a cyber attack of an unprecedented scale. Moussouris, however, believes that policy-makers can do more to protect themselves against attacks of this magnitude in the future.




Looks like hackers behind the WannaCry ransomware cyberattack, which infected computers across the globe, were not smart after all. According to the company, WannaCry ransomware apparently affected computers that have not applied the patch. After running on a victim's computer, the WannaCry ransomware tries to connect to an unregistered domain. After infecting a computer, the WannaCry ransomware can scan the entire internal network and target other machines by exploiting a recently patched Windows vulnerability. According to the researcher, "a bit of analysis" led him to the discovery of the domain, but finding the kill switch was accidental.

WannaCry ransomware attack

Attack [ edit ][25] Countries initially affectedOn 12 May 2017, WannaCry began affecting computers worldwide. [12][13]WannaCry is believed to use the EternalBlue exploit, which was developed by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA)[14][15] to attack computers running Microsoft Windows operating systems. [33] Following the attack, Microsoft released a security patch for Windows XP. [18] To deal with the unsupported Windows systems Microsoft has taken the unusual step of releasing updates for the unsupported Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 and patches for Windows 8 operating systems. [66]Microsoft has created security patches for its now-unsupported versions of Windows, including Windows XP, Windows 8 and Windows Server 2003.


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