{"id":13136,"date":"2017-08-08T20:00:33","date_gmt":"2017-08-09T01:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.psafe.com\/en\/blog\/?p=13136"},"modified":"2017-08-05T22:35:51","modified_gmt":"2017-08-06T03:35:51","slug":"this-guy-saved-the-world-from-a-cyber-attack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.psafe.com\/en\/blog\/this-guy-saved-the-world-from-a-cyber-attack\/","title":{"rendered":"This Guy Saved the World from a Cyber Attack"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Recently, the WannaCry virus managed to spread across 150 countries and attack a plethora of businesses, organizations, and other international targets.Do you know the story behind the WannaCry virus&#8217; notorious end? It turns out that a young, self-trained IT expert found a &#8220;kill switch\u201d while working from his bedroom. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Marcus Hutchins, the man behind this victory, doesn&#8217;t consider himself a hero \u2014 but the world certainly does. This young man spent three days fighting off the WannaCry virus, as it wormed its way into the UK&#8217;s hospital networks. Luckily for Marcus, the virus itself wasn&#8217;t well-constructed and, once he located its weak spot, the entire bot effectively collapsed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Read More: <\/b><a href=\"https:\/\/www.psafe.com\/en\/blog\/massive-global-cyberattack-ties-nsa\/\"><b>Massive Global Cyberattack Has Ties to the NSA<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n<p><b>The Damage Caused By the WannaCry Virus<\/p>\n<p><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">First emerging on May 12, 2017, the WannaCry virus infected a reported 230,000 computers. WannaCry is a strand of ransomware, which means it locks a user&#8217;s access to his or her device and demands payment to unlock them. In this case, WannaCry asks for $300 to $600 in Bitcoins. By May 15, the hackers had allegedly received around $50,000 from their malware&#8217;s antics.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Despite its global reach, WannaCry&#8217;s main targets appear to have been FedEx, Deutsche Bahn, the UK&#8217;s National Health Service (NHS), and Spain&#8217;s Telef\u00f3nica. WannaCry seized control of these company computers by taking advantage of a loophole in an older Windows operating system. Microsoft has since developed a patch to fix this issue.<\/p>\n<p><b>How to Keep Your Devices Safe<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>Update your version of Windows on your PC<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. \u00a0If you haven&#8217;t updated your computer to the latest operating system, or if your computer no longer receives updates, then your computer is still vulnerable to attacks like WannaCry and other malware.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>Use a firewall and run regular virus scans.<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Prevention is always the best strategy. Once your computer is infected with malware, it can be expensive, frustrating, and time-consuming to remove the infection.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>Be prepared for the worst<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Back up any important data on your computer by using a dropbox or cloud system. That way, if WannaCry or another virus strikes your operating system, you won&#8217;t lose any important data.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Most of all, remember that computers aren\u2019t the only thing at risk these days. Increasingly, attacks on smartphones are increasing year by year and becoming more sophisticated. That\u2019s when <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/play.google.com\/store\/apps\/details?id=com.psafe.msuite&amp;hl=en\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">DFNDR can come in handy<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Heroes come in all shapes and sizes. But the 22-year-old Brit, Marcus Hutchins, who stopped the WannaCry virus, says he was just doing his job.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1793,259,249,161],"class_list":["post-13136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-privacy","tag-computer-virus","tag-hackers","tag-security","tag-virus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.psafe.com\/en\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.psafe.com\/en\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.psafe.com\/en\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psafe.com\/en\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psafe.com\/en\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.psafe.com\/en\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13136\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.psafe.com\/en\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psafe.com\/en\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psafe.com\/en\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}