WannaCry Cyber Attack

[Hawkery]

I noticed this on the .com forum and thought it was worth sharing. (http://archive.forum.travian.com/showthread.php?t=160178)

In short and to my understanding: your best protection is to regularly make a back up of everything, giving you something to restore your computer to in the unfortunate event of a virus.

I also found some interesting reads on how someone accidentally stopped the ransomware from spreading (the technical details made no sense to me but it was interesting nonetheless). Forbes (https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2017/05/13/wannacry-ransomware-outbreak-stopped-by-researcher). Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/13/accidental-hero-finds-kill-switch-to-stop-spread-of-ransomware-cyber-attack).

links have been verified.

[commander]

Yep, if you have anything of any importance then backups is the way to go. Really though these should be physical copies on external hard drives that aren't connected to your PC (except when backing up obviously...) Some people have a couple and thus rotate them round robin style every week or whatever.

A lot of these viruses however are simply transmitted through email links. A bit of common sense and you should have very few problems, if any at all.

[mhudson]

Upgrade from XP if you can. If not ensure you are taking all updates from Microsoft. The free patch that mitigates this particular attack was released a few weeks ago so make sure you are keeping up to date.

Ensure you have an antivirus/anti-malware software and dont click links in websites/emails that you dont know.