Analysis of Wanna Cry Virus Attack: Incident, Impact, and Response

This report delves into the Wanna Cry virus attack, examining its origins, the incident timeline, and the impact on various systems and countries. The report highlights the ransomware's encryption methods, the affected operating systems, and the global scale of the attack, including the countries most affected. It also mentions the role of encryption and the involvement of North Korea. The report emphasizes the impact on business organizations and provides insights into the security threat. The paper concludes by summarizing the key aspects of the attack and its consequences. This report is a valuable resource for understanding the Wanna Cry incident and its implications for cybersecurity.

Running head: VIRUS ATTACK
Virus attack
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Name of the Virus..................................................................................................................2
Incident occurred....................................................................................................................2
Impact of the incident.............................................................................................................2
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................2
Reference....................................................................................................................................4

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Introduction
The principal purpose of this document is to focus on Wanna Cry virus. This paper
will be focussing on a brief explanation of the virus as well as its impact on our society.
Name of the Virus
Wanna Cry is defined as the type of ransomware worm which spreads in a chain of
network. This worm helps the social engineers to encrypt a file from a computer system, the
users of the system cannot decrypt the encrypted files by any means (Ehrenfeld, 2017). In
order to decrypt a file the users has to pay a ransom payment in the form of bit coins in order
to decrypt the files.
Incident occurred
The duration of this digital attack was 4 days from 12th May to 16th May. The incident
occurred in the year 2017, when this worm targeted most of the Microsoft Windows based
operating systems due to their loop holes. US National Security Agency however developed
an encryption system which helped in the decrypting the files from a ransomware attack.
Impact of the incident
According to the investigative sources it was found that North Korea was behind this
security attack. As a result of this security impact numerous business organizations were
negatively impacted as essential business data were encrypted (Mohurle & Patil, 2017). More
than 200000 computer systems across 150 countries were affected due to this security threat.
The most affected countries of this attack were Russia, Ukraine, Taiwan and India.
Conclusion
The papers helps in understand the impact of the Wanna Cry ransomware which
occurred in the May, 2017. The paper helps in understanding the impact of this security threat

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where more than 200000 computers systems were infected across countries like India,
Taiwan, Ukraine and Russia.

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Reference
Ehrenfeld, J. M. (2017). Wannacry, cybersecurity and health information technology: A time
to act. Journal of medical systems, 41(7), 104.
Mohurle, S., & Patil, M. (2017). A brief study of wannacry threat: Ransomware attack 2017.
International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer Science, 8(5).