If you haven’t been paying attention to the news today, a large scale cyber attack happened in the UK. The affected party was the National Health Service, which has ultimately ended up leaving large amount of Hospitals unable to use any of their programs of software. This includes diagnostic work like blood tests, urinalysis, CT scans, ect and will most likely lead to a few deaths due to a lack of response.
In reality the cyber attack was most likely caused by a technical executive who carelessly ran a file that ended up hitting all the computers on the system. Not only does this event show the extreme importance of good security practices, but it shows how powerful crypto and specifically cryptolocker malware can be.
I don’t know if the hospital was particularly targeted in this attack , or they just happened to open a file on the internet that contained the malware, but needless to say, shutting down multiple hospitals is terrible and I hope whoever designed the malware is held responsible.
Unfortunately I don’t think that will ever happen. In recent months we have been seeing more and more people getting cryptolockered and really the only solution is reformat or pay up. Because of how cryptographically strong currencies like bitcoin are, as long as someone doesn’t use a chokepoint that might identify them (an exchange, payment processor, ect) They will most likely never be caught.
Despite what happened today being a terrible strategy, there is something to say in the idea that a single person can shut down thousands of computers for ransom from anywhere in the world and there is nothing the hospitals or government can do about it. There is no bruteforce machine to undo it, no bank that can cancel the transaction, nothing. All you can do is pay or if the coder shows mercy and has a kill switch somewhere in the code, activate that, which is very unlikely as many of the people coding these types of malware see this as hitting the jackpot.
So in the future when you see more big stories like this one which I guarantee you will, just remember this is proof of a working system. This is proof that as long as people want to use crypto, it will be there for them , uncrackable, unbreakable and absolute.
