IT admins and cybersecurity departments are still dealing with WannaCry virus variants.
The original ransomware attack begun on May 12 2017. It quickly swept across the globe, exploiting a Microsoft vulnerability stolen from an intelligence agency. In the end, over 230,000 computers in 150 countries had been affected before the virus was stopped.
However, it was not really halted, according to a new report from Sophos. The cybersecurity firm has unveiled data suggesting that there were 12,000 variants of the virus in circulation. In August alone, Sophos stopped 4.3 million attempts to infected computers using any of these strings.
Luckily, the researchers that found that virtually every string of the virus still in circulation is “catastrophically broken” and incapable of encrypting the data of a victim’s computer. Yet, they are still able to infect computers without the Windows update the original virus exploited.
The US has faced the bulk of the attempts, with 22.5% of WannaCry detections in August being found there. This was followed by India where 8.8% were detected. Pakistan was the third must affected country with 8.4% being detected in the country.
