While the reporting of cyber crime events in the media has seen a marked increase in the last 5 years, the latest Ransomware incident titled WannaCry, has generated unprecedented levels of coverage. This I imagine, is not out of the ordinary when you consider the impact it has had on 200,000 victims worldwide from it’s first detection on Friday afternoon just gone (12 May 2017) . In this time it has virtually spread from nothing in a matter of hours to disrupt significant operations like: the NHS in the UK Spain’s Telefonica, Fedex as well as many other governmental agencies and businesses across over a hundred countries.
Ransomware isn’t new – as lots of financially motivated cyber criminals have been using it to extort relatively small amounts of money from victims over the last 5 years – however, WannaCry does herald the next significant phase in this form of attack. And as technology evolves, Cyber criminals are constantly refining their methods so as to create ever-more effective ways of monetising the flaws in computers’ software, and more often this is interfering with data integrity rather than compromising its confidentiality.
So why such a stir over WannaCry?
The advice on how to protect yourself remains the same as ever:
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