2024/05/05

World’s biggest cyber

attack
A REPORT ON THE “WANNACRY” ATTACK
ASHTON KREITZER
AGS
Table of Contents
Title……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………1
Table of contents…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..2

What a virus is……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….3

Executive summary………………………………………………………………………………………………………4

moral of the story……………………………………………………………………………………………….5

A virus is something that consists of coding that
can harm or damage the files of a device. They
normally come in many different types but the
most common being a direct-action virus. A type of
virus that demands money before a certain
deadline is called a “Ransomware” virus. They
contain a timed code that destroys the device from
the storage and takes the files to publish or keep
them to another device. They can infect almost
every device with a screen as it has a storage and
interaction of some type, it cannot infect things
without connection to the network such as a
calculator or a digital clock. Ransomware cant do
things others can even if they claim they can, such
as destroy a device completely like blowing it up or
doing unrepairable damage to the SD card.

WHAT A
RANSOMWARE
AND VIRUS IS
Executive summary of WannaCry
The story of the world’s worst cyberattacks begin in north Korea. At first, the virus was just
a simple ransomware incapable of doing severe harm. While this virus was developing a
protagonist was being made. The simple ransomware soon after becoming a sort of big
deal was named “WannaCry,” a legendary name with a tale soon to come. While
WannaCry was thriving, a young man named “Marcus Hutchings” was selling illegal
hacking tools. This man was a part of a big underground hacking society, yet his name was
not known well. He disliked the fact his name was not heard, and he was unpopular, so he
changed that by selling a huge password bypass hack tool for various uses. While he was
evolving WannaCry was too, it adapted an ability that no other ransomware had, it could
connect to every device that had a screen. What was useless ransomware soon becoming
a huge problem that soon took every device hostage. It is connected to trains, electronic
billboards, computers, mobile cellular devices, and much more. It asked for 300 dollars or
else it would publish all files on the device then destroy it from the internal storage. Marcus
was slowly developing skills with viruses and other hacking applications, but it was not
enough. No matter how fast Marcus learned he could never catch up to WannaCry and
stop it, or could he? After learning how to trace domains, he concluded that the WannaCry
virus led to a domain before executing the script to harvest the money. So, Marcus traced
and followed the domain link until he came to a point where he had enough of the virus’
roots where he could tug them out. He finished off WannaCry and successfully saved a lot
of devices, but the damage had already been done. WannaCry was able to reap a grand
total of 4 billion dollars (about $12 per person in the US) and made global damages into 6
billion dollars (about $18 per person in the US). After this incident, Marcus quit his side job
of illegal device and application dealing and was offered a job to work for the FBI. He
declined the invitation and instead works as a software engineer and watches out for
malware to trace.
 Moral of the story

Always use a VPN or some sort of virus protection, stay safe while using the internet, and do not
download random files. Of course, it is no one’s fault but the creators of the virus, but there are still
researchable ways to prevent this from happening again.