Tens of thousands of computers from companies, government agencies and individuals worldwide were paralysed. The dimensions of the attack are unprecedented. Meanwhile, The hackers have also caught the Deutsche Bahn.
“Ups, Your data were encrypted” – this message is boards on Friday evening, apparently, also on the display of the German stations appeared. Twitter users published via the short message service corresponding photos. “The Deutsche Bahn has become since yesterday evening and in the night the target of a Trojan that has infected worldwide, many companies and institutions,” the company said. The railway is not thereby impaired. There are no restrictions in long – Distance and local transport.
The first messages to the hacker attack came from the Spanish Telecom group Telefónica, and the UK. In the United Kingdom, he met many hospitals. The result is that in some places patients were asked to come only in urgent cases in the emergency room, ambulances diverted to other hospitals. In the course of the night, the wave captured the US shipping service is FedEx and the Russian interior Ministry.
“A series of cyber attacks”
“Today we have witnessed a series of cyber attacks against thousands of organizations and individuals in dozens of countries,” said the British authority for cyber security, NCSC. The IT company Kaspersky, which is specialized in such matters, spoke of at least 45,000 attacks in 74 countries. Jakub Kroustek of the security company Avast said, there have been 75.000 attacks in 99 countries. Everywhere, the computers were. Such a devastating attack it was not yet.
After the Computer had failed, prevailed in British hospitals Chaos
For the Chaos of the Virus “Wanna Decryptor is according to experts”, also known as “Wanna Cry”. Specifically, the attackers went like this: you put in the Windows operating system malicious software, the computer data is encrypted and only against payment. The fact that the computers infected each other, there was a veritable wave. So-called blackmail Trojans are among IT experts have known for a long time. Classic anti-virus Software is often powerless.
Cause and solution
In the event of a cyber attack on Friday miss the Hacker needed a once of the US secret service, the NSA exploited the security gap. Intelligence services look for those weak points to use them for their purposes. After last year, stolen technical information from the NSA came out to the Public, were crammed the gap actually from Microsoft. But not all computers have been updated and the avenged now.
Meanwhile, security experts have discovered, but, apparently, a kind of emergency brake in the program of the hack, with the help of the wave of cyber attacks can stop. How to be an expert of the platform malware tech blog announced via Twitter, the registry is one of the Trojans used a Domain Name to a computer virus widely used. He had accidentally stumbled on the “switch”, wrote the IT expert.
At the same time, people warned behind malware tech blog, it was urgently needed to close security loopholes in computer security systems as quickly as possible with Updates. “The crisis is not over, you can change the Code at any time and try it again.”
nin/ml (dpa, afp, rtr)