A cyber-attack is the worst nightmare for everyone, be it an individual or a business. The technology world was rocked by the biggest ever cyber-extortion case, when WannaCry Ransomware hacked more than 200,000 computers within a single weekend.
WannaCry is a malicious software that locks data and demands the users for a ransom, threatening to delete everything if they fail to pay. WannaCry hackers entered the computer systems through a loophole, initially identified by National Security Agency. Some of WannaCry’s major targets were UK’s National health system, Spain’s largest telecom company Telefonica and other business giants in Taiwan, Ukraine and Russia.
The hackers encrypt the affected computer’s data with the help of a central server. Once this is done, the computer freezes with a message asking for the ransom amount. Most of the times, the affected parties end up paying the ransom through bitcoin, which is an untraceable digital currency. However, there is no surety that the data will be retrieved once the ransom is paid. In some cases, the encrypted data was recovered successfully, while in other cases, it was lost permanently, even when the ransom was paid in full.
Now that the dust is settling on WannaCry, there’s alot of news going around – so the team over at UTGSolutions has put together the following infographic outlining the 15 major facts surrounding the WannaCry ransomware attack.
