It’s not over yet. Ransomware, a malicious virus which infected thousands of computers across 150 countries over the weekend seems to have lost its sting, but fears of a second wave have kept computer security experts on their toes. The virus brought down several computers by isolating their files. The demand was for $300 for release of files which would double after three days, and after seven days all files would be deleted. The organization to sustain the most damage was the British health services. Surgeries were delayed and patients had to be sent back. The situation is still precarious with doctors having to function the old fashioned way with pen and paper. This is a case of real life imitating reel life. The prospect of all files from computers being wiped out seemed like a plot that only Hollywood script writers could come up with. That is no longer true.
It has been established that the virus was developed from code discarded by the US National Security Agency, which routinely develops computer tools to stay ahead of the hacking race. This revelation shows that the Russians are not the only ones in the hacking business. Almost every government seems to have a programme to disrupt computer systems or influence outcomes in enemy countries. Russian President Vladimir Putin denied that the malware was developed in his country. Fingers are being pointed at North Korea, but it will take more than that to get a clear fix on the people or group behind the attack.
The Ransomware attack raises one question: How safe are we? Computers have come to dominate our lives. At the personal level we might use mobile phones to access content, make payments and do most of our work, but the back-end is handled by large computer systems which are vulnerable to attacks. Although Asian countries suffered the least, the use of pirated software and the lack of awareness leaves it open to attacks of this sort. It is now believed that systems running older versions of Microsoft OS were vulnerable. The disturbing part is that a patch released by the software giant was not automatically loaded. It is learnt that the vulnerability in the OS was discovered by the NSA and the patch was released subsequently, but not everyone went through the trouble of loading it.
Security experts worked over the weekend to create barriers against the attack and this world-wide effort has eased the problem. It is not known how many computer users paid the ransom to get their files released, but one thing is clear if the ransom is sufficiently low, people will pay and given the number of computers and systems in use, the total amount collected could be astronomical. This only means we can expect more such low-level, yet dangerous attacks in the future.
