Tuesday 16 May 2017

The WannaCry Ransomware Attack and its Solution


 The Wanna Cry Ransomware Attack is one of the most threatening cyber attacks which have their negative impact on 200,000 systems in around 104 countries all over the world. In fact it has been named as the largest by some prominent personalities. 
WannaCry Ransomware attack and Solutions

The Breakout: It was the media in Britain which reported that the computers in hospitals of the UK were put down by ransomware on 12th May 2017. Then it became a series of news items and it turned up as a cyber attack as the systems were getting crashed from all over the world.
The Origin: The European Cybercrime Centre said that it required a thorough investigation to identify the culprits initially. Meanwhile Microsoft issued emergency security patches. The names of the patches are WanaCrypt Patch for Windows 8 and Windows XP respectively.
The WannaCry Ransomware supposedly uses Eternal Blue Exploit which was developed by none other than the U.S. National Security Agency to attack the computers which operate using Microsoft Windows. Basically Eternal Blue was not released by NSA directly by a Hacker Group called as The Shadow Brokers on 14 April 2017 which got leaked and this is believed to be a part of The U.S. NSA.
Countries Affected: As per the report of Reuters, it was Russia which was the most affected. It had 60% of the infected computers. The others were India, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Germany, France, Spain, China, etc.


The Industries Affected: The worst sufferings took place in the United Kingdom as The WannaCry Ransomware attacked the hospital industry and the country had to compromise with their patient data. The court systems in Brazil were put down by the attack and as a result of it they disconnected their computers related to social security. Besides their foreign Ministry also did the same as precaution is better than cure.
Moving to Russia; the agencies reported that there was no permanent loss of information even when it was the country which was the most affected. The transport of Germany was made to stop with this ransomware; particularly the systems that are for train services.   
France’s major corporate giants also followed the footsteps of Brazil and disconnected the computers as the corporate is the backbone of the country. Spain’s telecommunications company was affected that badly that they had to perform ticketing offline.
Even the Windows systems users in China were affected. The computers were of the education industry; not all but some secondary schools and universities had to suffer. 
The Reason: Here we are going to highlight the reason behind Russia’s and India’s becoming the biggest victims. It is the usage of Windows in these countries the most which The WannaCry Ransomware has affected. China was also a partial victim just because of this reason.
Precautions: A simple way of life was taught to us by our parents. Never talk to strangers. So, here we should follow the same. Such attacks take place when some unknown links are clicked by any chance and obviously the links are really luring and attractive. So, The WannaCry Ransomware also took the advantage of the unreasonable curiosity of the people to know more!

The WannaCry Ransomware Solution: Microsoft has come into action as soon as more than 250000 computers from 123 countries got infected through WannaCry Ransomware. Microsoft has released a patch for windows named MS17-010 to prevent this dangerous Ransomware. Windows users can download the patch from this link: MS17-010 WannaCry Patch from Windows. So just install this patch from windows and keep your computers safe from this attack.


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