On Friday 12th May a new virus outbreak was detected and started spreading rapidly.

The virus was neutralized by Monday morning (via a Kill Switch which I will address in a future post.)

By Tuesday the security research community had finished their analysis and released their findings.

The virus was dubbed “WannaCry”. The attack was launched by the North Korean government. It was a specific type of virus classed as Ransomware. This type of virus encrypts important documents, photos and databases and asks for a ransom to be paid in order to recover files.

Computers in 150+ countries were affected. The total damage is estimated to have been 3.5 billion euros. So far the hackers have collected just over 100,000 euros.

The collateral damage caused by this virus far outweighs the money that collected! This leads to some very important questions…

I hope you found this snippet interesting. If you did please let me know so that I will continue to teach you what I have learned.