Michigan techie helped to stop the massive cyber attackTop Stories

May 15, 2017 07:07
Michigan techie helped to stop the massive cyber attack

A Michigan techie figured out how to stop the ransomware what experts call the biggest cyber attack ever.

According to authorities a Russian group of hackers created the ransomware called ‘WannaCry’ using stolen National Security Agency tools. The malware locks down the computer and demands $300 to release them.

The cyber attack affected more than 200,000 computers in more than 70 countries, including India and UK, where the attack shutdown emergency rooms.

28-year-old Darien Huss, who is a security expert for the cyber security firm Proofpoint reverse engineered the program and found a kill switch the creator of the malware to disable it. Huss said that the coder, who wrote the ransomware was not much experienced.

“We do not only investigate attacks against our customers, we also investigate anything that’s going on around the globe. It really did not take long to figure out there was a kill switch feature in it,” he said.

“This is probably one of the largest and widespread cyberattacks in the last 10 years. The individual or individuals responsible for this aren’t very sophisticated. It feels really amateur hour to me. The amount of law enforcement that are going to be investigating this, I really would not be surprised if the individual or individuals are apprehended. Personally, I really feel like I didn’t play a huge role in everything. All I really did is figure out that there was a kill switch feature. It just goes to show how interconnected our world is and how something so simple can have a devastating impact on everybody.”

A fellow security researcher in the United Kingdom helped Huss disable the ransomeware.

According to experts, victims of the cyber attacks have paid about $32,000 to free their files.

AMandeep

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Michigan  Russia  Malware  UK  Darien Huss  WannaCry