Boeing Hit By WannaCry Ransomware Attack (this is not an old story from last year.. WannaCry may have struck again)

Thursday, 29 March 2018 06:51 AM

ORIGINAL FULL STORY HERE

Readers would be forgiven for thinking this an old news story from last year. However, as of Wednesday, March 28, 2018, the Seattle Times reported that Boeing, a world leader in aircraft design and their sales, was experiencing a WannaCry attack. The same WannaCry ransomware that made international headlines the year before.In May 2017 reports began surfacing of a ransomware worm that spread rapidly across numerous networks. The ransomware was dubbed WannaCry and once it infected a Windows-based system it encrypts files on the PC's hard drive, making them impossible for users to access, then demands a ransom payment in bitcoin in order to decrypt them. Based on that one would think it was just a run of the mill ransomware. There were, however, a few factors that made the new ransomware strain noteworthy. It struck a number of important and high-profile systems, including many in Britain's National Health Service; it exploited a Windows vulnerability that was suspected to have been first discovered by the United States National Security Agency; and it was tentatively linked by Symantec and other security researchers to the Lazarus Group, a cybercrime organization that may be connected to the North Korean government. All this combined made the attack a perfect cybercrime storm.

It was estimated after the initial attack that businesses and organizations across 150 countries could have lost upwards of a combined 4 billion USD. This figure is particularly staggering when one considers that in 2016, ransomware schemes resulted in caused losses of 1.5 billion USD, according to market researcher Cybersecurity Ventures. That includes lost productivity and the cost of conducting forensic investigations and restoration of data. While the potential losses from reduced productivity and efforts to mitigate the damage from WannaCry were significant, the actual ransom collected through the attack is likely to be modest. Cybercriminals behind the scam typically demanded 300 USD in Bitcoin to unlock a company's computers. MORE...

RELATED REPORTS:

Global ransomware damage costs predicted to exceed $5 billion in 2017, up from $325 million in 2015. Ransomware damages up 15X in 2 years, expected to worsen; Ransomware attacks on healthcare organizations will quadruple by 2020.

Global ransomware damage costs predicted to exceed $11.5 billion annually by 2019. Ransomware will attack a business every 14 seconds by end of 2019.

-Steve Morgan, Editor-In-Chief, Cybersecurity Ventures