WannaCrypt has been in the news in the last week. The Ransomware has been one of the biggest in scale and has affected countries including India. Researchers were quick to point out that WannaCrypt Ransomware may have affected a large majority of Windows XP operating system which after further analysis was found to be false. The early numbers clearly point fingers at Windows 7 and this is alarming since Windows 7 is still supported by Microsoft.
The data from Kaspersky Lab says that nearly 98 percent of the affected systems ran on Windows 7 and only less than 1 in thousand (less than 1-percent) was running Windows XP.
Windows 7 is still the most widely used Windows operating system despite the meteoric rise of Windows 10. Its surprising to see how Windows 7 has been so largely exploited while the Windows XP and Windows 10 have been relatively unharmed.
Microsoft had apparently issued a patch for Windows 7 right before the attack while the Windows XP patch was released on an emergency basis. However, the patch couldn’t contain the damage and the WannaCry Ransomware plagued the system. Most of the Windows XP users were however left in lurch except for ones who had opted for Custom Support customers. But again according to Kaspersky, the Windows 7 machines were most vulnerable.
The first wave of the attack was stopped by security researcher Marcus, the second wave, however, had a diminishing effect since it was halted by Matthieu Suiche Also since most of the people were aware of the WannaCry by the time it reached the second phase the number of systems affected was very less.
The automated WannaCrypt decryption tool from Quark Security is expected to undo the damage done on Windows 7, Windows XP and the other Windows versions.
