Wannacry: A Cyber-Warfare in Modern Times

Running head: WANNACRY, A CYBER-WARFARE IN MODERN TIMES
Wannacry, a cyber-warfare in modern times
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1WANNACRY, A CYBER-WARFARE IN MODERN TIMES
In recent years, ransomware has evolved as one of the most important cyber frauds,
which affected the business organisations. This report will deal with the most important
attack in the history of cyber-warfare that is the WannaCry Ransomware attack (Mohurle and
Patil 2017). This report will explain the problems faced due to the ransomware attack, the
affected computers/organisation, the motives for the attack, the victims of this attack, risk
identification of the attack as well as the possible solutions to the prevent this type of attack
in the near future. This report will also seek for some security risk assessments as well as
some requirement analysis, which will incorporate and provide better solutions to protect any
computer/organisation from the attacks of ransomware.
Ransomware is a malware or a malicious software that are designed for blocking the
access of a computer system until an adequate amount of money is paid. This malware firstly
infects the computer systems by taking the total control of its access as well as of the whole
core operating system with the help of locking mechanisms and take the possession of the
user’s data by encryption. Then the user is asked to make a payment as ransom to the person
or to the organisation who is responsible for the attack, on the condition that after the
successful payment of the ransom the user’s computer will be unlocked of the malicious
program. However, in some cases after paying the ransom also the user was not provided to
access its data.
The unexpected Ransomware attack in the history of IT systems took place in May
2017 worldwide. This was WannaCry Ransomware attack, which mainly targeted the PC
Systems with operating systems of Microsoft Windows. This attack happened all over the
world and the data of the affected PC has been encrypted. Moreover, a demand of ransom
payments were asked for decryption of the data in the form of Bitcoin Crypto currency. This
attack targeted many computers worldwide and the losses may had reached approximately $4
billion. This attack took place in around 150 countries making this incident the most

2WANNACRY, A CYBER-WARFARE IN MODERN TIMES
damaging cyber fraud of all times. Every PC was asked to pay a ransom of approximately
ranging around $300 to $600 in terms of bitcoin within a span of seven days (Kao and Hsiao
2018). The pictorial representation of a PC screen after it has been affected with the attack is
provided below.
The WannaCry ransomware attack happened widely across many computers and it
began on Friday, 12th may 2017. The most infected OS in this attack was the Windows
Operating System and the first evidence of the attack was from Asia. The initial phase of the
infection was assumed as a vulnerability of an SMB port but the code of the Ransomware
reported to infect at about 230,000 computer within a day and over 150 computers.
The ransomware initially started attacking important as well as high-profile computers
including the Britain’s National Health Service (Boiten and Wall 2017). It was also viewed
that the attack also took place in the United States National Security Agency. It was also
found that the Lazarus Group, a cyber-crime organisation might be involved in this attack

3WANNACRY, A CYBER-WARFARE IN MODERN TIMES
which is connected to North Korean government. By the end of December 2017, countries
like United States, United Kingdom as well as Australia formally reported the involvement of
North Korea behind the WannaCry Ransomware attack.
The chronology of the Ransomware attack is as follows
12th May 2017 (Friday): In morning, Telefonica, a Mobile operator of Spain firstly
reported about the attacks of the WannaCry.
By the late morning, many hospitals over UK started reporting about the attack to
their national cyber incident response centre.
After that Renault, the French carmaker was also hit by the attacks of WannaCry.
In Russia, the interior ministry as well as MegaFon and Sberbank also experienced the
attack of the WannaCry Ransomware.
In US FedEx was the most probable high profile victim.
The predictable motive of the WannaCry Ransomware attack is to collect money in
terms of currency or crypto-currency (Kalita 2017). As this attack so not continued for long,
the motives of this ransomware attack can be stated as follows:
 Destructive: Despite of the financial terminology, the cybercriminals associated with
the attack had an intention to create a disruption in the business whose servers are
infected by the WannaCry Ransomware attack.
 Financial motivation: This is the motivation of the criminals, which initiated them to
think to extract as much as financial reward or ransom, which is possible (Koopman
2017).
 Crypto-currency manipulation: As the ransom was taken in terms of crypto
currencies, it is the best way to make money in illegal manner.