Banking

On Friday, May 12, a ransomware attack called WannaCry hit computers in Europe, followed by Asia and more than 150 other countries including the U.S. By Monday, the cyberattack had hit more than 300,000 computers, first locking them and then demanding a $300 payment to restore their files. While the identity of the individual or group who deployed the software (WannaCrypt) is yet unknown, it didn’t take long for copycats to pop up. That’s partly because the WannaCrypt ‘exploits’ were taken from the National Security Agency, which had reported the theft in April. About the same time, Microsoft released a patch to protect against the vulnerability. The problem was, few people took advantage of it.