Last weekend was definitely not a normal weekend. The flare out of the computer worm virus WannyCry[1] screwed lot of people’s weekend. It’s been quite long since last mass computer virus outbreak which I can remember was the Blast worm virus[2] back in 2003.
The virus takes advantage of the exploit MS17-010[3] in Windows’ SMB server, it use port 445 to get control of an unpatched computer, and then use this computer to infect more computers on the network. This time, the exploit affects almost every PC running Windows.
Especially for the PC still running outdated version like Windows XP which is widely used in my local banks, companies, stores, gov departments …, etc. Microsoft released a patch[4] for these end-of-life OSes on May 12th, which is very unusual. Continue reading Wanna Cry?