14 DAY TRIAL // WannaCry is becoming the largest ransomware infection in history with attacks now expanding from Europe to the United States, but Microsoft says that users who are running a fully up-to-date Windows 10 system with Windows Defender running the latest virus definitions are completely secure.
The infection has already made lots of high-profile victims in Europe, including the British National Health System (NHS) and other organizations in Spain, and exploits seem to be based on a leaked NSA vulnerability that reached the web last month.
At that point, security experts warned of imminent attacks on Windows systems due to what it seemed to be unpatched zero days in the operating system, but Microsoft played down all these claims saying that users running the latest patches were fully secure.
The same is happening this time as well, as Microsoft says that Windows users (regardless of their Windows version as long as they’re still supported - so Windows 7, 8.1, or 10) with the most recent updates installed (May 2017) and with the latest Windows Defender virus definitions are not vulnerable to attacks launched with this new form of ransomware.
Windows XP users completely vulnerable
On the other hand, WannaCry can still make millions of victims due to the fact that Windows XP and Windows Vista are still running on a hefty share of desktops out there, with both operating systems no longer receiving updates and security patches from the company.
Third-party market share data puts Windows XP at nearly 7 percent market share, and the NHS itself has previously been criticized for still running this unsupported Windows version on its systems. Updates for Windows XP are no longer released since April 2014.
The WannaCry ransomware locks down computers and requires a ransom of $300 in Bitcoin. The attacks are believed to be based on a vulnerability discovered by the NSA and which was leaked to the web by Shadow Brokers last month.
Once again, it’s critical for both home users and organizations to bring their systems fully up to date as soon as possible, especially because the number of attacks is growing with every minute and is now expanding to new regions.