Jeanette Manfra from CISA recently stated at a conference that an attack like WannaCry is very likely to happen again and that security experts would not be able to easily prevent it.
According to Manfra, one of the most important features of WannaCry was its ability to spread extremely quickly, which is what set it apart from other ransomware attacks.
“I don’t know if we could ever prevent something like this,” she said, still, Manfra.
The expert believes that even the hackers themselves, who were behind the attacks, would not have imagined at first that the ransomware would cause such huge damages.
WannaCry exploited vulnerable devices and affected hundreds of thousands of computers around the world. Many large and small companies fell victim to the ransomware and lost millions of dollars.
The hackers behind the attacks were linked to North Korea. They reportedly stole hacking tools from the NSA and used them to distribute WannaCry.
The spread of WannaCry was unintentionally stopped by security researcher Marcus Hutchins. Thanks to the researcher, millions of device infections were avoided.
BlueKeep
According to a recent warning from CISA researchers, about one million devices running Windows 7 or earlier are vulnerable to another threat, BlueKeep. Researchers believe that this threat could cause as much trouble as the WannaCry ransomware.
Both WannaCry and BlueKeep have the ability to spread incredibly quickly across many devices on the same network.
Some security researchers believe that BlueKeep will be exploited to carry out a similar massive attack.
The NSA warned users using the above vulnerable operating systems to update their software.
