Newly Found Vulnerability Increases Fears of Another WannaCry

By Prempal Singh 0 Comment May 27, 2017  kaspersky, kaspersky wannacry, mcafree wannacry, microsoft, microsoft patch wannacry, microsoft wannacry, ms17-010, ransomware wannacry, ransomwrae wannacry virus, symantec wannacry, virus wanancry 2.0, wanna cry, wannacry Bnpyc, wannacry mac, wannacry malware, wannacry patch, wannacry ransomware, wannacry windows 10, wannacry windows 7, wannacrypt windows update, windows update wannacry

A newly found flaw in widely used networking software leaves tens of hundreds of computers potentially susceptible to an attack similar to that caused by WannaCry, which infected more than 300, 000 computers worldwide, cybersecurity researchers said on Thursday.

The US Division of Homeland Security on Wednesday announced the susceptibility, which could be used to take control of a damaged computer, and urged users and managers to use a patch.

Rebekah Brown of Rapid7, a cyber security company, said that there were no indicators yet of attackers applying the vulnerability in the 12 hours since the discovery was announced. Nevertheless, she said it experienced taken researchers only 12-15 minutes to develop malware that made use of the hole. “This one appears to be very, easy to exploit, ” she said.

Rapid7 said it experienced found more than 100, 000 computers running susceptible versions of the software, Samba, free networking software developed for Linux and Unix computers. There are likely to be much more, it said in response to e-mailed questions.

Most of the computer systems found are running old versions of the program and cannot be patched, said, Brown. Some of the computers apparently belong to organizations and companies, she said, but most were home users. The susceptibility could potentially be used to make an earthworm like the one which allowed WannaCry to propagate so quickly, Brown said, but that would require an extra step for the attacker.

Cybersecurity experts have said they believe that North Korean hackers were behind the WannaCry malware, which encrypted data on victims’ computers and required bitcoin in return for a decryption key.

Source: www.dnaindia.com