Kaspersky researchers mentioned that tens of thousands of computers are infected in 74 countries worldwide by WannaCry ransomware.
“It’s important to note that our visibility may be limited and incomplete and the range of targets and victims is likely much, much higher,” the researchers mentioned.
MalwareTech has published live map for the area affected in the world.
“Russia, Ukraine and Taiwan leading,” Avast researcher Jakub Kroustek tweeted on Friday. “This is huge.”
Major company affected included FedEx, the Spanish phone company Telefonica, the Russian mobile phone operator MegaFon, and the UK’s National Health Service (NHS).
“This attack was not specifically targeted at the NHS and is affecting organizations from across a range of sectors.” NHS mentioned.
Joshua Douglas, chief strategy officer at Raytheon Foreground Security mentioned that the target was vital services like healthcare.
“Organizations are beginning to fully appreciate their exposure to risk, whether from negligent or malicious insiders, the growing attack surface are represented by the Internet of Things, or from the growing number of sophisticated attackers,” Douglas said.
“Healthcare, an industry with mountains of sensitive personal data and lives at stake, should consider security measures that take into account network users in addition to outside threats,” Douglas added. “When dealing with ransomware, advance security protections, basic cyber hygiene, tested disaster recovery plans and employee training are critical to protecting data.”
The attack has devastating impact on the services and systems.
“This is the first time that a worm-link tool has been used in conjunction with ransomware that has created devastating impact against entire organizations,” Fidelis Cybersecurity threat research manager John Bambenek said by email. “Strong and swift patching would have helped mitigate this threat. It has undoubtedly captured the imagination of criminals who don’t want to hold individual machines ransom but to take entire organizations hostage, and surely we will see much more of this in the coming weeks.”
“The fact that a vulnerability developed by the NSA was used in this attack shows the dangers that can happen when this knowledge gets out into the wild even after a patch has been developed,” Bambenek added. “Intelligence agencies will always be developing zero-days, but unlike traditional weapons, these tools can be repurposed quickly for devastating criminal attacks.”
“The intelligence community should develop strong procedures that when such tools leak, they immediately give relevant information to software developers and security vendors so protections can be developed before attacks are seen in the wild,” Bambenek said.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
Alertsec helps you comply with HIPAA, PCI and SOX requirements.