{"id":341009,"date":"2017-05-16T05:45:02","date_gmt":"2017-05-15T21:45:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/?p=1490728"},"modified":"2017-05-16T05:45:02","modified_gmt":"2017-05-15T21:45:02","slug":"wannacry-ransomware-is-still-spreading-fast-but-kill-switch-defenses-hold-for-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wannacry-ransomware-is-still-spreading-fast-but-kill-switch-defenses-hold-for-now\/","title":{"rendered":"WannaCry ransomware is still spreading fast, but \u2018kill switch\u2019 defenses hold for now"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

The WannaCry ransomware sweeping the world hasn\u2019t stopped its progress, but quick action by cybersecurity professionals has at least partially limited the damage it does as it goes.<\/p>\n

Over the weekend a \u201ckill switch\u201d was discovered by accident<\/a>, which doesn\u2019t stop the malware from spreading, but at least prevents it from activating the code that encrypts and ransoms your data.<\/p>\n

Researchers at Check Point spotted a new variant of WannaCry that used a different kill switch domain (it pings it and if it finds it isn\u2019t registered, it activates the ransomware; for more details, check out the original post on this behavior<\/a>). Of course they immediately registered it, preventing the new, mutant malware from activating.<\/p>\n

A side benefit of doing so is that the researchers get a ping whenever the ransomware infects a new computer, and in a blog post<\/a> they revealed that a new infection was popping up every second.<\/em><\/p>\n

Although those<\/em> computers won\u2019t have their data ransomed, it\u2019s not difficult to create a new variant (or 10) that may infect at a similar rate using kill switches that haven\u2019t been activated \u2014 if they include kill switches at all.<\/p>\n

The only real solution here is for vulnerable machines to be inoculated. Considering Microsoft took the rare step of issuing a patch for old, unsupported versions of Windows that are nevertheless found in the wild, there\u2019s no excuse for not doing so.<\/p>\n

Featured Image: Bryce Durbin<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"\" The WannaCry ransomware sweeping the world hasn’t stopped its progress, but quick action by cybersecurity professionals has at least partially limited the damage it does as it goes. Read More<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n

\"\"\/ <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5817,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[59,66,26],"class_list":["post-341009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-media","tag-techcrunch","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5817"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341009\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}