Ransomware attack should be a ‘wake-up call’ for governments

One of the biggest-ever ransomware attacks continues to take computers hostage.

The US security firm Symantec said the attack appeared to be indiscriminate. As of Monday morning, payments totaled just over $50,000 – tiny compared to the damage caused, but a tidy sum for the criminals.

The malware is believed to make use of an NSA hacking tool called Eternal Blue that makes it easier to invade older Windows machines.

Once installed, WannaCry locks the files on a computer and asks its victims to pay approximately $300 by Bitcoin within a few hours. It is reported that WannaCry, and variants of it, have hit organisations in 99 countries.

Ryan Kalember, senior vice president at Proofpoint Inc. which helped stop its spread, said the version without a kill switch could spread but was benign because it contained a flaw that prevented it from taking over computers and demanding ransom to unlock files. “Although there has been a significant amount of interest in the media and inescapable coverage of the outbreak, many systems will still be lacking the MS17-010 patch required to mitigate the threat”. A Windows vulnerability theft from the NSA last month has been directly tied to WannaCry. And while Microsoft had already released a security update to patch the vulnerability one month earlier, the sequence of events fed speculation that the NSA hadn’t told the US tech giant about the security risk until after it had been stolen. Meanwhile, a security researcher in the United Kingdom discovered a “kill switch” in WannaCry, further mitigating its impact. “That code has not been widely used, and has been seen only in attacks by North Korean-linked hackers”, according to the Times.

In Indonesia, the ransomware hit computers in at least two hospitals, prompting the Indonesian government to urge businesses to update computer security. The company rates the update as “critical” for supported Windows releases.

“T$3 his attack demonstrates the degree to which cybersecurity has become a shared responsibility between tech companies and customers”, Smith said in his blog post.

Anyone who hasn’t updated their Windows PC recently. Install all Windows updates. 5. Turn on auto-updaters where available (Microsoft offers that option).

The alert was followed by the Gujarat government’s effort to equip state computer systems with anti-virus software tools and upgrade its Microsoft operating systems.

Once you have rebuilt the infected workstation before patching it with the recommended patch, restore your system from the backup you have made. Don’t click on links that you don’t recognize, nor download files from people you don’t know personally.