Epidemic WCry 2.0: the day the infected tens of thousands of computers. How to protect yourself?

On Friday, may 12, began the global spread of a new virus-the extortioner WannaCry 2.0. According to “Kaspersky Lab”, the day the virus had infected tens of thousands of Windows computers in 74 countries. The victims were a telecommunication company of Spain and Portugal, hospitals in England, the Russian “MegaFon”, “Sberbank” and even of the interior Ministry. After getting into PC WannaCry encrypts all user files and unlocking them requires a $300. How ransomware infects computers and how to protect ourselves from it – read on.

The creators of the virus have used hacking tools of us intelligence agencies NSA, who some time ago was leaked the efforts of hacker group ShadowBrokers. The first reports of extortion 2.0 WCry came from hospitals in the UK. But as the spread of the virus most of the infections noted in Russia, Ukraine and Taiwan. According to experts antivirus company Avast, map infection looks like this:

The spread of the virus?

The virus spreads over the network in several ways. Some computers was infected after opening the received e-mail and others after visiting the fake sites. The content of websites and emails can be very different. For infection WCry 2.0 is using a vulnerability of the Windows operating system that Microsoft closed a security update, March 14 this year. Apparently, the infected computers simply have not been updated.

At the time of this publication, the spread of the virus has been suspended due to chance. Security specialist, author of the blog MalwareTech studied the virus code and found that WCry 2.0 refers to a non-existent domain iuqerfsodp9ifjaposdfjhgosurijfaewrwergwea.com. The expert registered this domain, and the spread of the virus stopped. A direct order to stop the spread when you register a domain contained in the code WCry.

“Now I can add to your summary paragraph “accidentally stopped an international cyber attack,” – wrote in his Twitter MalwareTech.

How to protect yourself from Wcry?

The distribution of ransomware has been very successful and the second wave of the epidemic is very likely. To protect your computer, Windows users may need to take the following actions:

• Install all operating system updates
• Download and install the security patch from the Microsoft official website
• Additionally, it is recommended to scan your computer antivirus program. It is known that WannaCry detected by anti-virus Kaspersky and Avast with relevant databases.

Source: 4pda.ru