Hackers exploited a piece of NSA code known as “Eternal Blue” that was released last month by a group known as the Shadow Brokers, to unleash global cyberattack that hit international shipper FedEx, disrupting Britain’s health system and infected computers in nearly 100 other multinationals.
Security firms had identified the attacks as “WannaCry” ransomware that had the ability to automatically spread across large networks by exploiting a known bug in Microsoft’s Windows operating system.
While the most disruptive attacks were reported in Britain, involving hospitals and clinics where most were forced to turn away patients after losing access to data on computers.
The Shadow Brokers released Eternal Blue as part of a set of hacking tools belonging to the U.S. spy agency as reported by WikiLeaks.
Albeit, extortion by means of a ransomeware has been on the rising, it had only affected small-to-mid sized organizations in the United States and Europe.
Microsoft, however, has pushed out automatic Windows updates to mitigate the effects of WannaCry. Adding that it had also issued a patch on March 14 to protect users against Eternal Blue.
