On May 12, a version of the WannaCryptor (WannaCry) ransomware infected thousands of computers around the world. In just 24 hours, the number of incidents exceeded 185,000 machines in more than 100 countries.
The attack is particularly dangerous for businesses because it only takes one employee to be infected to spread the attack across the entire network and sometimes even to other subsidiaries in other countries, without any other interaction between users. This is because the ransomware is a worm that exploits a recently discovered vulnerability, affecting a wide range of Windows operating systems, including 2008, 2008 R2, 7, 7 SP1.
The attacks have caused serious problems for organizations such as hospitals, telecommunications companies, and gas and utility companies. Among the organizations worst hit is the National Health Service (NHS) in the United Kingdom.
attack ransomware particularly dangerous?
WannaCry automated the exploitation of a vulnerability present in most versions of Windows, allowing a remote attacker to execute code on the vulnerable computer and use that code to plant ransomware and execute it automatically without requiring any action from the user. This unprecedented behavior makes it the perfect tool for attacking specific environments or infrastructure, such as servers running a vulnerable version of the Server Message Block (SMB protocol).
Bitdefender users are not affected by this attack.
Next-generation machine-learning and introspection technologies ensured that customers were always safe from the WannaCry ransomware attack and will protect them from any future such attacks.
Endpoints with Bitdefender GravityZone were protected from the start of this attack wave and were not affected by this new ransomware version as the products detect and block both its delivery mechanism and all known variants of WannaCry. Bitdefender’s machine-learning models, available in all versions of Bitdefender GravityZone, are specifically designed to prevent attacks that have never been found before they are executed.
