Discussion Modules 3 & 4.docx - For this assignment,...

For this assignment, research a recent cybersecurity issue that had a considerable impact
on an enterprise.
 Describe in detail the recent cybersecurity issue that you selected.
 How was the enterprise impacted?
 What could have been done to prevent the incident?
WannaCry is a ransomware that attacks infected computers, encrypts the data, and
demands a ransom to decrypt the data. WannaCry was a crypto viral extortion (ransomware)
assault that swept across the globe like a flash of lightning in early 2017. It took over infected
PCs and encrypted the data stored in the Hard Drive Disk (HDD). After this, the ransomware
demanded compensation in the form of Bitcoin to decrypt the data. It took advantage of a
weakness in Microsoft’s Windows Operating System (WOS) using a code that was developed
behind closed doors by the National Security Agency (NSA) of the United States (U.S.). The
exploit was EternalBlue, and it was appropriated and disclosed by a hacking group named
Shadow Brokers (Fruhlinger, 2018).
This ransomware had multiple elements, which are a function that encrypts and then
decrypts the content on the users' PC. A TOR (The Onion Router) is software enabling online
privacy and files having encryption keys. It comes on contaminated PCs as a dropper, which is a
self-supporting software package, and it isolates components of other applications that are
embedded within it. Once WannaCry is launched, then it tries to access a hard-coded Uniform
Resource Locator (URL), and if it fails to do so, then it moves on to searching for and encrypting
the files, causing them unavailable to the user (Fruhlinger, 2018). After this, a ransom notice is