Χθες μέσα από μια σειρά δημοσιεύσεων, γνωστοποιήσαμε ότι γνωρίζουμε για την μεγαλύτερη επίθεση ransomware που ξεκίνησε την Παρασκευή που μας πέρασε. Χρησιμοποιώντας ένα από τα exploit της NSA που διέρρευσαν πρόσφατα από την team Shadow Brokers, attackers were able to infect computers globally with WannaCry (a Windows exploit embraced by the NSA's EternalBlue tool).
Microsoft has already released Several updates about this vulnerability, but many users and organizations did not bother updating their systems.
The company in front of the devastating effects of the worm that continues to spread, overwhelmed and released updates for Windows XP, Windows (server) 2003 and Windows 8.
Yesterday we also reported that in code του κακόβουλου λογισμικού υπήρχε και ένας διακόπτης απενεργοποίησης με την μορφή ενός kill switch domain.
What does this mean in simple words? when the malware detect that there is a particular domain, stops infections. This domain was created (registered) earlier today by a researcher, who observed the dot-com in the reverse-engineered binary. When the listing was detected by the malicious software, the ransomware distribution, and its worldwide spread, was immediately stopped.
But let's make it clear what the kill switch does:
The kill switch can not help devices that are already infected and locked with WannaCry.
By registering the domain and then moving it to a server environment that is meant to record and keep the sinkhole MalwareTech essentially bought time for systems that are not already infected.
"Fortunately, MalwareTech had the infrastructure to create a sinkhole," says Darien Huss, senior security research engineer at security company Proofpoint.
"If someone had bought doamin and not prepared then we would be seeing too many infections right now."
If the installation did not have enough space and the server did not have enough bandwidth, the malware would not be trapped and would not be self-destructing.
Let's add that the discovery of MalwareTech is not a permanent solution. All it takes to get started again is a new WannaCry executive whose code will block the kill switch or use a more sophisticated URL generator instead of a static IP address.
However, the discovery of MalwareTech has helped slow down the process.
We hope that with so many security analysts observing, and analyzing the behavior of WannaCry malware with reverse engineering, someone else will eventually find a more permanent way to disable it. Every minute counts….
