What is the Wanna Cry Ransomware Virus ?

Wanna Cry Virus : What is it ?

On 12th May 2017, The world came under the biggest malware attack of the decade in the form of Wanna Cry Virus. More than 86,000 systems got infected within the first 24 hours of the attack. By Monday morning, it was estimated that around 220,000 machines around the world had fallen prey to this serious malware.

What is the Wanna Cry Virus ?

It is a Trojan horse, that installs itself into your computer as some innocuous application and then starts to work its malice in the background. Within minutes, it converts all the files on your computer into an encrypted form.

You start to see the following display, where the virus informs you that all your files have been encrypted, and have thereby become inaccessible.

In order to get the decryption key for your files, the virus makers demand 300 dollars from you, in the form of bitcoin money. If not paid within three days, this amount doubles.

Although, computer programmers for the past few days have been working around the clock to find a way to Decrypt the infected files, they have failed to come up with any workable solution. So for now, the only way to get your files back is to pay these blackmailers.

Some of the precautions you can take to protect yourself from this virus, is to copy your important files in a separate location (like a pen drive, removable hard disk), and keep your operation system and antivirus updated. Microsoft, in fact, released an update late Friday for Windows to protect its users from the Wanna cry Virus.

Two Top security firms have found evidence linking the wanna cry ransomware to the prolific north korean cybergang known as Lazarus group.