The Wannacry Attack

The WannaCry attack first surfaced in a May 2017 worldwide cyberattack. The WannaCry worm is basically a virtual attack that exploits a flaw in Windows software to gain access to a network and attacks computers using ransomware. It was designed to lock users out of their data by encrypting files until they pay a fee, sometimes in cryptocurrency, or other type of ransom. Mounir Hahad, head of Juniper Threat Labs at Juniper Networks, said the infection could potentially have come from a dormant version of the original virus. Williams of Rendition Infosec said he knows of three manufacturing companies that were hit, two of them now his clients in the United States, that suffered production stoppages because of WannaCry infections in the last six months. In both cases, configuration files that controlled machines were lost and systems had to be reinstalled from scratch before production could restart. Boeing should be concerned that future attacks might still happen. Luckily William’s company has produced a free software fix called Tearstopper that he said prevents WannaCry viruses from encrypting files.

The WannaCry attack first surfaced in a May 2017 worldwide cyberattack. The WannaCry worm is basically a virtual attack that exploits a flaw in Windows software to gain access to a network and attacks computers using ransomware. It was designed to lock users out of their data by encrypting files until they pay a fee, sometimes in cryptocurrency, or other type of ransom. Mounir Hahad, head of Juniper Threat Labs at Juniper Networks, said the infection could potentially have come from a dormant version of the original virus. Williams of Rendition Infosec said he knows of three manufacturing companies that were hit, two of them now his clients in the United States, that suffered production stoppages because of WannaCry infections in the last six months. In both cases, configuration files that controlled machines were lost and systems had to be reinstalled from