It exploits supposedly NSA-developed vulnerabilities on unpatched Windows systems.
England's healthcare system came under a withering cyberattack Friday morning, with "at least 25" hospitals across the country falling prey to ransomware that locked doctors and employees out of critical systems and networks. It's now clear that this is not a (relatively) isolated attack but rather a single front in a massive digital assault.
The attack quickly impacted hospitals and transportation infrastructure across Europe, Russia and Asia. Organizations in dozens of countries have all been hit with the same ransomware program, a variant of "WannaCrypt," spouting the same ransom note and demanding $300 for the encryption key, with the demand escalating as time passes.
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This is a very serious ransomware attack which most likely affected a lot of Windows users who had their computer held for ransom. Hopefully, the backups can be restored, computers are quickly scanned for malware and ransomware, and the data can be unlocked if the data was not backed up.
I think if you have a lot of important data like England's Hospital, and Transportation networks it is a good idea to regularly backup data on an hourly to daily basis. It is a good idea for some users and companies to learn how to use Linux, and UNIX PCs, Servers, and database servers, and not totally depend on Windows, or only one type of operating system for opening and storing files, so if Windows or Linux systems are attacked by ransomware, users still have backup PCs running UNIX which they can use until the computer tech department fix most of the Windows or Linux PC systems, and fully test that all Windows or UNIX PCs are secure to use. It is not as likely that UNIX, Linux, and Windows are all attacked by the same time as one operating system which is attacked all at once.
England's healthcare system came under a withering cyberattack Friday morning, with "at least 25" hospitals across the country falling prey to ransomware that locked doctors and employees out of critical systems and networks. It's now clear that this is not a (relatively) isolated attack but rather a single front in a massive digital assault.
The attack quickly impacted hospitals and transportation infrastructure across Europe, Russia and Asia. Organizations in dozens of countries have all been hit with the same ransomware program, a variant of "WannaCrypt," spouting the same ransom note and demanding $300 for the encryption key, with the demand escalating as time passes.
Read More
This is a very serious ransomware attack which most likely affected a lot of Windows users who had their computer held for ransom. Hopefully, the backups can be restored, computers are quickly scanned for malware and ransomware, and the data can be unlocked if the data was not backed up.
I think if you have a lot of important data like England's Hospital, and Transportation networks it is a good idea to regularly backup data on an hourly to daily basis. It is a good idea for some users and companies to learn how to use Linux, and UNIX PCs, Servers, and database servers, and not totally depend on Windows, or only one type of operating system for opening and storing files, so if Windows or Linux systems are attacked by ransomware, users still have backup PCs running UNIX which they can use until the computer tech department fix most of the Windows or Linux PC systems, and fully test that all Windows or UNIX PCs are secure to use. It is not as likely that UNIX, Linux, and Windows are all attacked by the same time as one operating system which is attacked all at once.
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