14 DAY TRIAL // The WannaCry ransomware that affected thousands of computers across the world was based on a vulnerability stolen from the NSA by hacking group Shadow Brokers, who decided to publish it online earlier this year.
Furthermore, the same hacking group also revealed some other vulnerabilities that the NSA was holding and believed to be using for breaking into computers across the world, and there’s a good chance the agency owns more security flaws that haven’t yet been made public.
This is why security company Qihu developed the so-called 360 NSA Cyber Weapons Defense tool, an application whose purpose is to scan your computer and determine whether it’s vulnerable to any of the known vulnerabilities that were previously used by the NSA.
Scanning for NSA vulnerabilities
This involves the EternalBlue exploit, which was used for WannaCry, but also a bunch of other tools used in cyber attacks across the world, like EternalChampion, EternalRomance, and EternalSynergy.
“Attackers with these NSA cyber weapons can break into more than 70% of the Windows systems in the world. An unpatched PC may be infected as soon as it connects to the Internet even without any click on a link or a file,” the security company explains.
The application can scan your computer to see if it’s fully patched to block all known vulnerabilities, and if any security flaws are found, to automatically download and install the updates to keep you secure. What’s more, an Internet connection is not needed, so you can patch the system without actually going online and thus exposing to any risk of getting infected.
Without a doubt, some users might be worried that a Chinese company is building a software solution to block NSA’s hacking tools, but it’s actually a very easy method to search for any vulnerabilities that might expose your system when going online.
As usual, you can download the 360 NSA Cyber Weapons Defense tool from Softpedia, and keep in mind that an admin account is needed to patch your system.