Major Cyber Attack Kill Switch Found by Accident, But War Is Not Over
SputnikNews.com
14.05.2017
A security researcher has accidentally activated a “kill switch” to stop the spread of what the cyber community dubbed the largest global ransomware attack in history. But the threat is not yet eliminated.
Cyber criminals on Friday used malicious software to exploit a flaw in Windows operating systems and infect hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide with a fast-spreading version of WannaCry ransomware.
The vicious cyberattack swept across the globe Saturday, hitting computers in nearly 100 countries, with Russia and the UK being among the most affected. It locked up critical systems of several high-profile organizations, such as Britain’s National Health Service (NHS), Russian telecom company Megafon, Spain’s largest telephone company, and international shipper FedEx, and attacked but was contained in other systems, among them the Russian Interior Ministry.
The number of new infections substantially dropped on Saturday after a security researcher, tweeting as @MalwareTechBlog, registered a domain name connected to the malware, thus discovering a secret “kill switch” that can prevent the malware from spreading.
“We are on a downward slope, the infections are extremely few, because the malware is not able to connect to the registered domain,” said Vikram Thakur, principal research manager at Symantec, as cited by Deutsche Welle.
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