Cyber attack Warning!!!
By Gary Marsh
@garymarsh6 (23404)
United Kingdom
May 12, 2017 1:46pm CST
Today there has been a massive cyber attack on our national Health service in the UK. It is ransomware. A file stops you being able to access any documents, photos, or use the computer safely. This has meant Accident and Emergency departments have initiated a major incident plan asking the public only to go to hospital if it is really necessary.
The problem may be heading its way across the Atlantic too. Reports have come in from other countries that they have been affected.
So what is ransomware. It freezes all your files and demands you pay a fee so that you can get into those files again. If you do not pay within a certain time the evil wicked programme will wipe your files so that you will not be able to recover them!
Be careful what you open over the next few days. Do not open ANY attachments even from people you know or trust.
I do hope that government agencies track these despicable people down. Peoples lives have been put at risk because of this. These people should be made an example of and punished very severely.
14 people like this
11 responses
@TiarasOceanView (70022)
• United States
12 May 17
Yes I saw this probably posted about the same time Gary..so bad.
2 people like this
@TiarasOceanView (70022)
• United States
12 May 17
@garymarsh6 Yes that is a pity isn't it? They really ought to be more on it Gary.
2 people like this
@garymarsh6 (23404)
• United Kingdom
12 May 17
Yes horrific. The hospitals are so reliant these days on IT stuff. They are just morons!
2 people like this
@garymarsh6 (23404)
• United Kingdom
12 May 17
IT is dreadful and so malicious isn't it!
1 person likes this
@1hopefulman (45120)
• Canada
12 May 17
After I saw your discussion I checked the news and it seems to have caused a mess. Can we be infected by opening a link provided on a discussion on MyLot?
1 person likes this
@garymarsh6 (23404)
• United Kingdom
12 May 17
I guess anything is possible. I try not to open links even from people I trust. I lost all my stuff last year doing the same thing. I had an email from my nephew with a file. Innocently I opened it only to have a similar ransomvirus thing which wiped out all my files and photos. I could have cried as I have so many things on my PC. Luckily a friend and I back each others stuff up just in case so I was able to get most of it back.
1 person likes this
@1hopefulman (45120)
• Canada
12 May 17
@garymarsh6 Wow,that's scary. Do you know if anti-virus programs like Norton 360 Premier back up our content?
1 person likes this
@garymarsh6 (23404)
• United Kingdom
12 May 17
@1hopefulman I am not the best person to ask this type of question to be honest, I just have my usual antivirus stuff but I still managed to get hit by one!
1 person likes this
@petertheo (148)
• South Africa
28 May 17
Hi Gary, so what can one do to prevent this from spreading to us?
@garymarsh6 (23404)
• United Kingdom
13 May 17
Yes there are various figures of how many countries have been affected by this. It is ridiculous. It is so bad if we cannot check results for patients as it determines what treatment we need to give.
@RasmaSandra (79892)
• Daytona Beach, Florida
12 May 17
Thanks for the warning. As it is I usually never open any attachments whatsoever.
1 person likes this
@MarshaMusselman (38865)
• Midland, Michigan
19 May 17
I read something about this just yesterday. The internet security suite we currently use says that this type of attack doesn't come in the way that most viruses do by way of email attachments but it directly attacks each organization it's trying to bring down. I don't know if this is the same ransomware that's attacked the systems there or not.
This is a quote from one email I got recently:
"You might have already heard that a new family of ransomware called WannaCry has infected over 140,000 computers worldwide. This piece of ransomware is based on a zero-day exploit that helps it jump from one infected computer to another and encrypt all the information stored on it.
Unlike other ransomware families, the WannaCry strain does not spread via infected e-mails or infected links. Instead, it takes advantage of a security hole in most Windows versions to automatically execute itself on the victim PC. According to various reports, this attack avenue has been developed by the National Security Agency (NSA) in the US as a cyber-weapon and it was leaked to the public earlier in April along with other classified data allegedly stolen from the agency."
1 person likes this
@garymarsh6 (23404)
• United Kingdom
14 May 17
I am hoping the hospital where I work has not been affected. It hadn't been by time I left on Friday but I have ordered quite a few important blood tests to be done this weekend so I hope that they have been done and I can access the results in the morning. EEK!
@FayeHazel (40243)
• United States
12 May 17
Oh no. That's sad. I hope your info is safe and they catch the hackers
1 person likes this
