What is Wanna. Crypt ransomware, how does it work how to stay safe. Wanna. Crypt Ransomware, also known by the names Wanna. Cry, Wana. Crypt. Wcrypt is a ransomware which targets Windows operating systems. Discovered on 1. 2th May 2. Plenty of people have described Hurricane Harvey as a disaster of biblical proportions, and it seems the next plague is upon us. Its not locusts. Thanks to untold. Even the largest Windows XP fan Why Windows XP Wont Be Going Away Anytime Soon Why Windows XP Wont Be Going Away Anytime Soon People cannot let go of Windows XP. Information on running Star Wars Episode I Racer on modern PCs. The first of the four Starry Sky games starring the characters from the drama CDs of the same name. Starry Sky takes place at Seigetsu Gakuen, a school which. Ashampoo_Snap_2017.01.09_10h11m46s_003_.png' alt='Unpatched Windows Xp Iso' title='Unpatched Windows Xp Iso' />Wanna. Crypt was used in a large Cyber attack and has since infected more than 2. Windows PCs in 1. Wanna. Crypt initial hits include UKs National Health Service, the Spanish telecommunications firm Telefnica, and the logistics firm Fed. If youve ever wondered how a photographer managed to capture the exact moment of an incredible end zone reception or the instant a bird takes flight, the answer. InformationWeek. com News, analysis and research for business technology professionals, plus peertopeer knowledge sharing. Engage with our community. What is WannaCry or WannaCrypt ransomware How does it infect a computer Are you also on the threat list How to best protect your Windows system Get all questions. Ex. Such was the scale of the ransomware campaign that it caused chaos across hospitals in the United Kingdom. Many of them had to be shut down triggering operations closure on short notice, while the staff were forced to use pen and paper for their work with systems being locked by Ransomware. How does Wanna. Crypt ransomware get into your computer. As evident from its worldwide attacks, Wanna. Crypt first gains access to the computer system via an email attachment and thereafter can spread rapidly through LAN. The ransomware can encrypt your systems hard disk and attempts to exploit the SMB vulnerability to spread to random computers on the Internet via TCP port and between computers on the same network. Who created Wanna. Crypt. There are no confirmed reports on who has created Wanna. Crypt although Wana. Crypt. 0r 2. 0 looks to be the 2nd attempt made by its authors. Its predecessor, Ransomware We. Cry, was discovered back in February this year and demanded 0. Bitcoin for unlocking. Currently, the attackers are reportedly using Microsoft Windows exploit Eternal Blue which was allegedly created by the NSA. These tools have been reportedly stolen and leaked by a group called Shadow Brokers. How does Wanna. Crypt spread. This Ransomware spreads by using a vulnerability in implementations of Server Message Block SMB in Windows systems. This exploit is named as Eternal. Blue which was reportedly stolen and misused by a group called Shadow Brokers. Interestingly, Eternal. Blue is a hacking weapon developed by NSA to gain access and command the computers running Microsoft Windows. It was specifically designed for the Americas military intelligence unit to get an access to the computers used by the terrorists. Wanna. Crypt creates an entry vector in machines still unpatched even after the fix had become available. Wanna. Crypt targets all Windows versions that were not patched for MS 1. Microsoft released in March 2. Windows Vista, Windows Server 2. Windows 7, Windows Server 2. R2, Windows 8. 1, Windows RT 8. Windows Server 2. Windows Server 2. Youcam 4 Full Version For Windows 7. R2, Windows 1. 0 and Windows Server 2. The common infection pattern includes Arrival through social engineering emails designed to trick users to run the malware and activate the worm spreading functionality with the SMB exploit. Reports say that the malware is being delivered in an infected Microsoft Word file that is sent in an email, disguised as a job offer, an invoice, or another relevant document. Infection through SMB exploit when an unpatched computer can be addressed in other infected machines. Wanna. Crypt is a Trojan dropper. Exhibiting properties that of a dropper Trojan, Wanna. Crypt, tries to connect the domain hxxp www. API Internet. Open. Url. A However, if the connection is successful, the threat does not infect the system further with ransomware or try to exploit other systems to spread it simply stops execution. Its only when the connection fails, the dropper proceeds to drop the ransomware and creates a service on the system. Hence, blocking the domain with firewall either at ISP or enterprise network level will cause the ransomware to continue spreading and encrypting files. This was exactly how a security researcher actually stopped the Wanna. Cry Ransomware outbreakThis researcher feels that the goal of this domain check was for the ransomware to check whether it was being run in a Sandbox. However, another security researcher felt that the domain check is not proxy aware. When Executed, Wanna. Crypt creates the following registry keys HKLMSOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrent. VersionRunlt random string lt malware working directory tasksche. HKLMSOFTWAREWana. Crypt. 0rwd lt malware working directory It changes the wallpaper to a ransom message by modifying the following registry key HKCUControl PanelDesktopWallpaper lt malware working directory Wana. Decryptor. bmpThe ransom asked against the decryption key starts with 3. Bitcoin which increases after every few hours. File extensions infected by Wanna. Crypt. Wanna. Crypt searches the whole computer for any file with any of the following file name extensions. ARC ,. mdb ,. sqlite. PAQ ,. vmdk ,. djvu ,. It then renames them by appending. WNCRY to the file name. Wanna. Crypt has rapid spreading capability. The worm functionality in Wanna. Crypt allows it to infect unpatched Windows machines in the local network. At the same time, it also executes massive scanning on Internet IP addresses to find and infect other vulnerable PCs. This activity results in large SMB traffic data coming from the infected host, and can be easily tracked by Sec. Ops personnel. Once Wanna. Crypt successfully infects a vulnerable machine, it uses it to hop to infect other PCs. The cycle further continues, as the scanning routing discovers unpatched computers. How to protect against Wannacrypt. Microsoft recommends upgrading to Windows 1. Install the security update MS1. Microsoft. The company has also released security patches for unsupported Windows versions like Windows XP, Windows Server 2. Windows users are advised to be extremely wary of Phishing email and be very careful while opening the email attachments or clicking on web links. Make backups and  keep them securely. Windows Defender Antivirus detects this threat as Ransom Win. Wanna. Crypt so enable and update and run Windows Defender Antivirus to detect this ransomware. Make use of some Anti Wanna. Cracking A Vigenere Encryption'>Cracking A Vigenere Encryption. Cry Ransomware Tools. Eternal. Blue Vulnerability Checker is a free tool that checks if your Windows computer is vulnerable to Eternal. Blue exploit. Disable SMB1 with the steps documented at KB2. Consider adding a rule on your router or firewall to block incoming SMB traffic on port 4. Enterprise users may use Device Guard to lock down devices and provide kernel level virtualization based security, allowing only trusted applications to run. To know more on this topic read the Technet blog. Wanna. Crypt may have been stopped for now, but you may expect a newer variant to strike more furiously, so stay safe and secure. Microsoft Azure customers may want to read Microsofts advice on how to avert Wanna. Crypt Ransomware Threat. UPDATE Wanna. Cry Ransomware Decryptors are available. Under favorable conditions, Wanna. Key and Wana. Kiwi, two decryption tools can help decrypt Wanna. Crypt or Wanna. Cry Ransomware encrypted files by retrieving the encryption key used by the ransomware. Microsoft Windows Wikipedia. Microsoft Windows. Developer. Microsoft. Source model. Closed shared source. Initial release. November 2. Windows 1. 0. Latest release. November 1. 4, 2. Latest preview. RS4 1. November 8, 2. 01. Marketing target. Personal computing. Available in. 13. Update method. Package manager. Windows Installer. Windows Store. appx2Platforms. ARM, IA 3. 2, Itanium, x. DEC Alpha, MIPS, Power. PCKernel type. Default user interface. Windows shell. License. Proprietarycommercial software. Official websitewindows. Microsoft Windows, or simply Windows, is a metafamily of graphicaloperating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Microsoft. It consists of several families of operating systems, each of which cater to a certain sector of the computing industry with the OS typically associated with IBM PC compatible architecture. Active Windows families include Windows NT and Windows Embedded these may encompass subfamilies, e. Windows Embedded Compact Windows CE or Windows Server. Defunct Windows families include Windows 9x, Windows Mobile and Windows Phone. Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 2. MS DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces GUIs. Microsoft Windows came to dominate the worlds personal computer PC market with over 9. Mac OS, which had been introduced in 1. Apple came to see Windows as an unfair encroachment on their innovation in GUI development as implemented on products such as the Lisa and Macintosh eventually settled in court in Microsofts favor in 1. On PCs, Windows is still the most popular operating system. However, in 2. 01. Microsoft admitted losing the majority of the overall operating system market to Android,4 because of the massive growth in sales of Android smartphones. In 2. 01. 4, the number of Windows devices sold was less than 2. Android devices sold. This comparison however may not be fully relevant, as the two operating systems traditionally target different platforms. Still, numbers for server use of Windows that are comparable to competitors show one third market share, similar to for end user use. As of September 2. Windows for PCs, tablets, smartphones and embedded devices is Windows 1. The most recent versions for server computers is Windows Server 2. A specialized version of Windows runs on the Xbox Onevideo game console. Genealogy. By marketing role. Microsoft, the developer of Windows, has registered several trademarks each of which denote a family of Windows operating systems that target a specific sector of the computing industry. As of 2. 01. 4, the following Windows families are being actively developed Windows NT Started as a family of operating system with Windows NT 3. It now consists of three operating system subfamilies that are released almost at the same time and share the same kernel. It is almost impossible for someone unfamiliar with the subject to identify the members of this family by name because they do not adhere to any specific rule e. Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 88. Windows RT are members of this family but Windows 3. Windows Embedded Initially, Microsoft developed Windows CE as a general purpose operating system for every device that was too resource limited to be called a full fledged computer. Eventually, however, Windows CE was renamed Windows Embedded Compact and was folded under Windows Compact trademark which also consists of Windows Embedded Industry, Windows Embedded Professional, Windows Embedded Standard, Windows Embedded Handheld and Windows Embedded Automotive. The following Windows families are no longer being developed Windows 9x An operating system that targeted consumers market. Discontinued because of suboptimal performance. PC World called its last version, Windows ME, one of the worst products of all times. Microsoft now caters to the consumers market with Windows NT. Windows Mobile The predecessor to Windows Phone, it was a mobile phone operating system. The first version was called Pocket PC 2. Windows Mobile 2. Windows Mobile trademark. The last version is Windows Mobile 6. Windows Phone An operating system sold only to manufacturers of smartphones. The first version was Windows Phone 7, followed by Windows Phone 8, and the last version Windows Phone 8. It was succeeded by Windows 1. Mobile however Microsoft has since discontinued active development of Windows 1. Mobile due to its low market share. Version history. The term Windows collectively describes any or all of several generations of Microsoftoperating system products. These products are generally categorized as follows Early versions. The history of Windows dates back to September 1. Chase Bishop, a computer scientist, designed the first model of an electronic device and project Interface Manager was started. It was announced in November 1. Apple Lisa, but before the Macintosh under the name Windows, but Windows 1. November 1. 98. 5. Windows 1. Apples operating system, but achieved little popularity. Windows 1. 0 is not a complete operating system rather, it extends MS DOS. The shell of Windows 1. MS DOS Executive. Components included Calculator, Calendar, Cardfile, Clipboard viewer, Clock, Control Panel, Notepad, Paint, Reversi, Terminal and Write. Windows 1. 0 does not allow overlapping windows. Instead all windows are tiled. Only modal dialog boxes may appear over other windows. Windows 2. 0 was released in December 1. It features several improvements to the user interface and memory management. Windows 2. OS from tiled windows to overlapping windows. The result of this change led to Apple Computer filing a suit against Microsoft alleging infringement on Apples copyrights. Windows 2. 0 also introduced more sophisticated keyboard shortcuts and could make use of expanded memory. Windows 2. 1 was released in two different versions Windows2. Windows3. 86. Windows3. Intel 8. 03. 86 to multitask several DOS programs and the paged memory model to emulate expanded memory using available extended memory. Windows2. 86, in spite of its name, runs on both Intel 8. Intel 8. 02. 86 processors. It runs in real mode but can make use of the high memory area. In addition to full Windows packages, there were runtime only versions that shipped with early Windows software from third parties and made it possible to run their Windows software on MS DOS and without the full Windows feature set. The early versions of Windows are often thought of as graphical shells, mostly because they ran on top of MS DOS and use it for file system services. However, even the earliest Windows versions already assumed many typical operating system functions notably, having their own executable file format and providing their own device drivers timer, graphics, printer, mouse, keyboard and sound. Unlike MS DOS, Windows allowed users to execute multiple graphical applications at the same time, through cooperative multitasking. Windows implemented an elaborate, segment based, software virtual memory scheme, which allows it to run applications larger than available memory code segments and resources are swapped in and thrown away when memory became scarce data segments moved in memory when a given application had relinquished processor control. Windows 3. x. Windows 3. Vx. Ds that allow Windows to share arbitrary devices between multi tasked DOS applications.