The WannaCry ransomware has not only been doing harm to ordinary users, but also stopping factories. The second wave of the cyberattack bypassed Europe and hit Asia. Recently, dozens of thousands of computers all over the world were infected with the WannaCry virus. By means of this malicious software, wrongdoers encrypt data, demand ransom payments in the Bitcoin cryptocurrency – an amount equivalent to 300 to 600 dollars, – and threaten to make irreversible changes in the seized data unless the ransom is paid by May 19. Ukraine immediately became one of the most-affected countries.
A programmer, who uses the account @MalwareTechBlog in Twitter, accidentally stopped the cryptoworm by registering a domain name he found in the code of the ransomware, The Guardian says. However, experts are expecting a second wave. Fortunately, the virus failed to spread further through the hit e-mail, but analysts do not rule this out in the near future, Reuters points out.
There were local cyberattacks in Asia. The Chinese authorities have blocked some online services, but it is not clear whether they did so because of the attacks or for routine maintenance. The energy company PetroChina has said payment systems at some of its filling stations were hit, while the Japanese police reported about two cyberattacks – at a hospital and at a private person’s home. The government of India has only said that some big corporations managed to avoid several attacks.
In Europe, the businesses hit by WannaCry are resuming the work of their networks. Among the corporations whose computes were infected are Renault-Nissan and Deutsche Bahn. “We should expect similar attacks regularly in the coming days and weeks,” said Guillaume Poupard, head of the French cybersecurity agency ANSSI. He believes that hackers may be updating their instruments and learning on their mistakes.
