Ransomware Infection Hits Computers Across 99 Countries
May 13th, 2017: A large-scale cyber-attack has affected over 99 countries around the globe. It is believed that tools developed by the US national Security Agency were used for carrying out this attack. Computers across the globe have been locked by a ransomware that demands $300 in Bitcoin, in order to leave their computer alone. Back in April a group of hackers that goes by the name of Shadow Brokers, stole the necessary tools for such an attack and released them online.
Scale of the attack: Reports of infections from the ransomware have been coming from users in over 99 different countries, which includes UK, US, China, Russia, Italy and even Spain. Security firm Avast released a report, according to which the company had seen around 75000 cases of Ransomware around the globe by the name of WannaCry and other similar names.
Many researchers suspect this to be a random attack rather than a coordinated ransomware attack on specific targets. Meanwhile, Bitcoin Wallets that are seemingly associated with ransomware, have already started filling up.
Areas Affected the Most: The national Health Service (NHS) of England and Scotland seems to have been affected the most by the ransomware attacks. NHS staff has been sharing screenshots and pictures of the WannaCry program since the incident started.
Hospitals were told turn away patients, which almost certainly is going to cause causalities. Russia, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal have all been hit by the Ransomware attack and pictures from all around the world have started to surface on the internet.
Who is behind the attack? As of this point, nobody knows who is behind the ransomware attack, but one thing authorities know for sure is the fact that the tools that were made public by Shadow Brokers. Microsoft had already released a patch for the vulnerability back in March but many users had not updated their OS. The company is still providing assistance to its customers on whatever level that it can.
Knight in Shining Armor: The UK based Cybersecurity researcher who goes by the twitter handle of "@MalwareTechBlog" has accidentally managed to stop the spread of ransomware for now.
The hacker noticed a web address in WannaCry's code and discovered that it was still available for purchase. He went ahead with the purchase and bought "NameCheap.com" for around 10$. The UK-based researchers seem to have triggered the worm's own self-destruct, by simply purchasing the domain name. A complete accident.