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Last week a massive international cyberattack was launched, which saw individuals and businesses around the world infected by ransomware known as "WannaCrypt".
This ransomware encrypts files and other data on your computer, so you can no longer access them. It then replaces your desktop background image, informing you your files have been encrypted and creates a note demanding a ransom of $300 bitcoin (digital currency) to recover access.
The ransomware or ‘worm’ (referred to because of its self-spreading ability), can easily move throughout a network, rapidly expanding its reach and posing a devastating threat to businesses.
The head of Europol, the European Union’s police agency, reported there have been more than 200,000 victims in at least 150 countries.
In the UK, 16 National Health Service organisations were affected, causing chaos among hospitals with patients being re-directed, surgeries cancelled and treatments stopped as client records were inaccessible. Large telecommunications firms Telefonica in Spain and Megafon in Russia were affected, as was the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs and international shipping company FedEx. The US Department of Homeland Security has commented on the incident, advising people to update their operating systems.
Australia has also been affected by the attack, with infections being reported in some parts of Perth, Melbourne, Sydney and rural NSW.
The worm takes advantage of a bug in Microsoft’s Windows operating system, and uses a piece of coding called ‘Eternal Blue’ which was allegedly created by the US National Security Agency and released by the hacker group known as the Shadow Brokers.
The worm has been identified as a subsequent version of the recent “WannaCry” attack which occurred earlier this year; for which Microsoft had already developed a patch for to protect their customers. The Windows patch addressed the vulnerabilities in the system which allow malware such as this to attack.
The attack has been halted by a computer security researcher who registered a domain linked to the attacks in an attempt to analyse them, and inadvertently stopped further infections.
Individuals and businesses who operate on Windows 10 are not affected by the malicious software, as it only targets older versions of Windows. People who currently use supported versions of the operating system, including Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 that have automatic updates enabled will have received a security update in March, and will be protected from the worm.
Microsoft has also taken the ‘highly unusual’ step of providing a security update for versions of Windows that are no longer supported and no longer receive updates, including Windows XP, Windows 8 and Windows Server 2003.
If you are operating any Windows system earlier than Windows 10, now is the time to check and see if you have installed the latest security updates to ensure you are protected. If you do not have automatic updates enabled on your computer, you should manually install the update as soon as possible.
You can get the updates here.
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