It was first time on Friday, May 12, 2007, when more than half the world’s computer came to standstill after attacked by ransomeware known as “WannaCry” (WannaCrypt or WCry). This ransomeware attacked about more than 57,000 computers across the world and targated Microsoft’s run PC/Laptop and ATMs. The attack is being considered as the biggest in the history and spreads by methods including phishing emails and on unpatched systems.
Soon after release of this ransomeware, an UK based researcher accidently discovered a “kill switch” hardcoded while trying to analyze the attack. Then the researcher registered on the domain which the malware seem to ping before infection. This stopped the attack as a worm and instructed malware not to proceed encrypting the files and thus make it inactive. After this, the creator of ransomeware analyze the issue and altered the code to remove the bizarre error and restarted the campaign.
On March 14, 2017, Microsoft has released a patch (MS17-010) for the security holes. Those who took the initiate and applied the patch are protected against it and those who do not are affected. Microsoft has asked to download the patch and also released security patches for unsupported versions of Windows XP, Windows 8 etc.
In the coming week, the situation can go more worse.So, one must require to download the released patches from Microsoft and update their anti-virus and malware software to keep the ransomeware attack away.
To know how to get the ransomeware patch update,click the link here
