Imagine some cyber thug capturing and holding your irreplaceable computer data for ransom: your photos, your financials, your personal information, your contacts and correspondences. They give you a deadline by which time you must transfer a specified sum of money to the data-napper or else your data will be destroyed. The WannaCry virus did exactly this to more than 230,000 computer owners worldwide between May 12th and May 15th.
The malware that infected all those computers took advantage of a flaw in the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol of the Windows operating system. The flaw was originally discovered by the National Security Agency (NSA) which exploited it for its own purposes. Microsoft became aware of the flaw only after that information was stolen from the NSA by hackers and made public. Microsoft issued a patch for the problem on March 14, 2017 for the versions of Windows it still supports. But many Windows users failed to apply the patch leaving their computers vulnerable to the attack; and no patch was made available for older versions of Windows.
Cyber thugs quickly took advantage of the new information and developed the WannaCry virus to attack many of those unprotected computers. The attack only ended on May 15th because an enterprising cyber security researcher discovered a built-in “kill switch”. He didn’t even know at the time it was a kill switch. Buried in the WannaCry code was a web domain name. The researcher realized that the domain was currently unregistered on the web. So he registered it, and the attack stopped. We can only surmise that the WannaCry thugs thought they might need a way to shut down the virus at some point for whatever reason. They probably won’t be so predictable next time… and there WILL be a next time. Count on it.
So, what would you do if you were a victim of such an extortion scheme? Pay whatever the thugs ask for or lose your data forever? Well, that’s a choice you won’t have to make if you use PC Condom. Unlike your Antivirus software, which wouldn’t have known about WannaCry and therefore, couldn’t have stopped it, PC Condom does not need to know about a particular virus or malware to stop it. Because PC Condom prevents all executable files from getting to your hard drive in the first place. If the malware can’t get to your hard drive, it cannot run. Period.
PC Condom protects your computer from the myriad infections crawling around in cyberspace. Slip on the PC Condom and fear the web no more. PC Condom is peace of mind, and it is much more affordable than the ransom the cyber thugs demand. There’s even a 30 day free trial.