Supported versions of Windows, and Windows 10 in particular, were safe from the WannaCry Ransomware that hit Microsoft's operating system last month, thanks to an exclusive patch released by the software giant in March of this year.
However, a team of researchers from the company RiskSense managed to port the WannaCry exploit to infect a specific version of Windows 10. It should be noted that no detailed information or details have been made public, and that users of Microsoft's operating system remain protected if they have installed the latest patches.
[su_note note_color=”#f1edd8″ text_color=”#494134″ radius=”1″]The WannaCry ransomware is based on EternalBlue, an exploit intercepted by the NSA last summer and published online earlier this year by the hacking group Shadow Brokers.[/su_note]
Security researchers at RiskSense have created a Metasploit module that could bypass security features implemented by Microsoft in Windows 10, including Data Execution Prevention (DEP) and Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) protection. Some additional modifications were also made to WannaCry, including the removal of the DoublePulsar backdoor, which is not necessary for the exploit to work.
Windows 10 is completely secure
RiskSense experts explain that the purpose of this project was to help prevent similar attacks in the future, not to provide hackers with information on how to compromise Windows 10. This information is secret anyway and has not been made public, so simulating the attack on Windows 10 is unlikely.
"We have omitted key information that would be useful only to attackers and not so much to software developers to effectively shield them against this threat. The research is aimed at the white-hat information security industry, in order to increase understanding of these exploits, and to develop new techniques that prevent this and future attacks," the researchers explain in a relevant blog post.
The new exploit works on Windows 10 x64, version 1511 (November update), which is still supported by Microsoft as part of the current operating system for businesses.
Windows users are advised to keep their systems fully up to date and verify that the MS17-010 update provided by Microsoft to address WannaCry is running on their computers.
