Security firms revealed that more than 75% percent of machines victimized by WannaCry Ransomware cyber-attack were running on Windows 7
Kaspersky analyzed the 97% of the computers were using an older version of software on their systems and BitSight claims that 66% of the computers used older software.
In the UK, some hospitals had to turn away patients as the worm shut down computer systems. Many people believe that UK hospitals became target because there were programs that still needed older windows XP to run.
But infections of XP by WannaCry were “insignificant” said Costin Raiu from Kaspersky Lab.
Windows 7 was released first in 2009 and the most widely infected version was the x64 bit version, which is still widely used in large organisations, showed figures, said Kaspersky.
Before the ransomware attack Microsoft release a security patch, an update to secure the system, but many organizations failed to install updates to their systems paved the way of attack to spread across.
Some experts argue that WannaCry attack first initiated through email phishing campaign, while others believe that the attack sought to find vulnerable machines on the internet using older versions of software.
Adam McNeil, malware analyst at Malwarebytes, unveiled the real story behind the attack, the worm was designed to look for machines that are vulnerable to a bug in a Microsoft technology known called the Server Message Block (SMB).
“The attackers started to hunt down vulnerable public SMB ports and, once they were located, they used the newly available SMB exploits to deploy malware and propagate to other vulnerable computers within the networks interconnected,” he said.
Ransomware cyber attack also entered in India and affected so many medium and small firms, in Pakistan it was reported that national owned insurance firm was affected by the virus but not much damage was done according to the news sources.
If you are still using Windows 7 consider installing latest updates and patches from Microsoft or upgrade your Windows to 8 or 10 in order to minimize the probability of future attacks.
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