Just weeks after the WannaCry ransomware was announced, the world has seen yet another disruptive cyber attack. June 27, 2017 a more sophisticated global ransomware attack crippled computers from Eastern Europe to North America. What seems to have originated from a tax software provider in the Ukraine has spread across the continent of Europe and has even impacted Australia and the United States.
This attack impacted thousands of computers in a wide range of businesses such as: computers that operated ATMs, radiation monitoring machines at the damaged Chernobyl nuclear plant, and even computers that run chocolate production at the Cadbury company in Australia. What at first appeared to be an amatuer attack is now seen as a much more sophisticated attack that locks up files and demands ransom for access from tens of thousands of computers.
CNN is reporting that this, “ ransomware virus is a worm that infects networks by moving from computer to computer. It uses a hacking tool called EternalBlue, which takes advantage of a weakness in Microsoft Windows. Microsoft (MSFT, Tech30) released a patch for the flaw in March, but not all companies have used it. EternalBlue was in a batch of hacking tools leaked earlier this year that are believed to have belonged to the U.S. National Security Agency.”
Early research into this attack shows that the cyber criminals hope to to destroy and damage. Unlike the WannaCry attack this latest attack has no easy kill switch. There have only been reports of a kill switch for one version and it is not known if that will be effective. Check back with us as we continue to cover this event.
Categorised in: hacking, IT Consulting Services