Worst of WannaCry may be over but the ‘cyberattack game has changed’
Malware puts weapons of mass cyber destruction in hands of everyday thugs, Chinese specialist says
The worst of the WannaCry global malware attack may be over for now, but specialists say it has changed the game in cybersecurity.
“In the past, the tools and technologies [of launching cyberattacks on such a scale] were in the hands of governments. But now, a thug on the street can get access to a cyberweapon of mass destruction,” Professor Xue Yibo, a researcher at Tsinghua University’s Network Security Lab in Beijing, said.
The WannaCry virus started spreading rapidly around the world on Friday, locking up data on infected computers and networks in more than 100 countries, and demanding a ransom to release the systems.
There were fears for the worst as people returned to work after the weekend, but across the United States, Europe and Asia, few new cases were reported on Monday and Tuesday as most work computers were taken offline until their systems were scanned and updated.
A feared mutation of the malware, or WannaCry 2.0, did not materialise either. And while international cybersecurity agencies reported variants of the ransomware, all appeared to respond to a “kill switch” stopping them from wreaking further havoc.