The so-called WannaCry which brought down computers worldwide including U.K hospitals
In the end it wasn't the cyber Armageddon that it seemed to be at first glance.
On May 12, the world awoke to the beginnings of hundreds of thousands of old microsoft windows based computers seizing up as they succummed to a virulent strain of malicious software, appropriately dubbed WannaCry. Within hours, the digital pandemic circled the globe like the spanish flu, infecting machines running outdated operating systes in some 150 countries, spreading across numerous homes and corporate networks. The attack, which relied on powerful tools believed to have been developed by the NSA and leaked online in April by a group of hackers known as the Shadow Brokers, wormed its way through businesses, hospitals and governments, all of which found themselves suddenly locked out of their systems.
Researchers detected the wave quickly, and it wasn't long bafore they picked up on the criminals self defeating mistakes. The attackers failed to assign each victim a seperate Bitcoin wallet, researchers noted, a critical error that meant they would not be able to easily track ransom payments. They neglected to automatic the money collection in a way that would scale. And then there was the matter of the kill switch.
No one is quite certain why the attackers coded a self-destruct button into their software, yet that's precisely what they did, Marcus Hutchins, a 22-year-old security researcher based in England who goes by the moniker MalwareTech, stumbled on the power plug largely by accident. After taking lunch on that Friday afternoon, encoded within, Curious, he registered the domain for less than $11. This simple act sinkholed the malware. Killing the virus' ability to propagate and buying time for organisations to upgrade their software and deploy protections.
The attackers "had a Ferrari engine from the NSA, basically, and they put it in a Ford Focus body, which they got form some ransomeware kit", says Ryan Kalember, a cybersecurity strategist at prooofpoint. Despite the campaign's prevalence, in total it has netted a measly $80,000. Compare that with the estimated $60 million annually raked in by the Augler ransomeware campaign in years past
Still, the attack caused serious damage and downtime for those affected, In response, Brad Smith, Microsoft's president and chief legal officer, said the comapany shouldered "first update for unsupported operating systems, like windows XP, even though it had retired them years ago. Smith then took a swat vulnerabilities in tech companies code for surveillance purposes. He compared recent leaks of this information to the military's "having some of its Tomahawk missiles stolen".
Russian president Vladimir Putin piled on, noting that Microsoft identified the NSA as the source of the hacking tools. He added, "Russia has absolutely nothing to do with this"....
On May 12, the world awoke to the beginnings of hundreds of thousands of old microsoft windows based computers seizing up as they succummed to a virulent strain of malicious software, appropriately dubbed WannaCry. Within hours, the digital pandemic circled the globe like the spanish flu, infecting machines running outdated operating systes in some 150 countries, spreading across numerous homes and corporate networks. The attack, which relied on powerful tools believed to have been developed by the NSA and leaked online in April by a group of hackers known as the Shadow Brokers, wormed its way through businesses, hospitals and governments, all of which found themselves suddenly locked out of their systems.
Researchers detected the wave quickly, and it wasn't long bafore they picked up on the criminals self defeating mistakes. The attackers failed to assign each victim a seperate Bitcoin wallet, researchers noted, a critical error that meant they would not be able to easily track ransom payments. They neglected to automatic the money collection in a way that would scale. And then there was the matter of the kill switch.
No one is quite certain why the attackers coded a self-destruct button into their software, yet that's precisely what they did, Marcus Hutchins, a 22-year-old security researcher based in England who goes by the moniker MalwareTech, stumbled on the power plug largely by accident. After taking lunch on that Friday afternoon, encoded within, Curious, he registered the domain for less than $11. This simple act sinkholed the malware. Killing the virus' ability to propagate and buying time for organisations to upgrade their software and deploy protections.
The attackers "had a Ferrari engine from the NSA, basically, and they put it in a Ford Focus body, which they got form some ransomeware kit", says Ryan Kalember, a cybersecurity strategist at prooofpoint. Despite the campaign's prevalence, in total it has netted a measly $80,000. Compare that with the estimated $60 million annually raked in by the Augler ransomeware campaign in years past
Still, the attack caused serious damage and downtime for those affected, In response, Brad Smith, Microsoft's president and chief legal officer, said the comapany shouldered "first update for unsupported operating systems, like windows XP, even though it had retired them years ago. Smith then took a swat vulnerabilities in tech companies code for surveillance purposes. He compared recent leaks of this information to the military's "having some of its Tomahawk missiles stolen".
Russian president Vladimir Putin piled on, noting that Microsoft identified the NSA as the source of the hacking tools. He added, "Russia has absolutely nothing to do with this"....
No comments:
Post a Comment