Hey what's up guys, I'm ThioJoe.
By you've hopefully heard about Wannacry, the infamous ransomware computer virus that's
been going around the past couple weeks.
If you somehow aren't, well here's the quick summary.
Earlier this year there were a bunch of leaks from the NSA that revealed unpatched Windows
exploits.
These exploits had actually been patched for a while in the most recent versions of Windows,
but as we know, not everyone keeps their operating up to date.
For example, there are millions and millions of computers that still run Windows XP which
is no longer being updated, and even for more recent verions like Windows 7, some people
have updates disabled for some stupid reason.
All of these people, which included businesses too slow to upgrade, were vulnerable to these
exploits.
And these exploits were pretty nasty, the main one is known as "EternalBlue".
You didn't even have to do anything to become infected.
The exploit allows someone to directly connect to your computer out of nowhere and take over.
After the virus infects one computer, it now has access to that entire local network, and
uses the computer's file sharing services to take over every computer it's connected
to.
Not only that, but the virus will actually PATCH the exploit once it infects a computer,
effectively shutting the door behind it so no other viruses can get in and steal control
again.
But the worst thing about the Wannacry viruses is what it does after it infects a computer.
I've talked about ransomware before, which I think are the most evil kinds of viruses.
This type of virus will encrypt all of the files on your computer, making them completely
useless unless you have the encryption key.
And to get it, the virus demands a payment of $300 in bitcoin, and double that if you
wait too long.
Eventually if you don't pay, it threatens to delete the encryption key, locking you
out of your files forever.
Now wannacry has been one of the most talked about viruses in a long time, both because
of how damaging it is, and also because of how widespread it has become.
There were hundreds of thousands of computers in 150 countries infected, even including
some hospitals where some medical equipment systems were infected.
So is there anything that's being done about this all this?
Well obviously the answer is yes.
The first line of defense is to simply keep your computer up to date on security patches
that fix this exploit.
If you're running something like XP, you need to get with the program, because that operating
system is not receiving any more updates, and more and more exploits WILL be found.
In this case, Microsoft decided the exploit was so bad that they actually released an
emergency patch for Windows XP even though they said it's no longer supported.
But don't expect that to keep happening.
There's really no reason to not keep Windows up to date on the latest patches.
However I will say for a lot of their major updates like the anniversary update, did have
a lot of bugs.
But you aren't usually forced to get those updates until a while later, so by then the
bugs should be fixed.
Besides staying up to date with patches, you should also have an antivirus as I've said
countless times before.
You might think you are too smart or too familiar with computers to get a virus, but Wannacry
is proof that that's not true.
The next time an exploit is found, it might not be patched yet, and you're left completely
vulnerable even if you don't do anything wrong.
I think the best thing is to get antivirus software that both scans for viruses, and
has internet security features, meaning it will block attempts that you might come across
online from infecting you in the first place.
And while Windows does have built in antivirus, it really isn't that good.
The third thing you need to do.
And I mean NEED to do, is back up your computer.
And not only that, do it in a way where the virus can't infect the backup as well, which
I'll talk about.
The importance of backing up your computer should be obvious.
It's not even mainly about viruses, but rather the fact that your hard drive WILL fail eventually.
All of them do.
If you just keep all your important files on your one computer and that's it, you're
playing with fire.
Hard drives don't give you much warning if they're going to fail, if they do at all,
and once they do you can't get your data off it.
In some cases you can spend thousands of dollars and send it to a data recovery company, but
it's not a guarantee.
We know from research done by Backblaze, a backup company, how often hard drives fail.
In the first year and a half, you can expect a 5% failure rate.
That's a one in 20 chance you'll lose all your data.
If you make it past a year, chances are it will survive the next year and a half.
But after just 3 years, they saw a failure rate of nearly 12%, and obviously gets worse
after that.
Now I KNOW that many of you have computers older than 3 years old.
Heck, mine is about that old.
Right now as you're sitting here, there's a 1 in 10 chance your hard drive will fail
this year.
Alright so I think you get my point, let's get back on topic.
So backing up your data.
It's not as hard as you think.
Modern versions of windows all have built in backup features that make it incredibly
easy.
You can just plug in an external hard drive that's big enough to fit your stuff, enable
Windows automatic backup, and wow you just saved yourself a lot of headache.
But that's not all you should be doing, because consider this.
Maybe that external hard drive is as safe as you think.
Maybe a thief brakes in and steals your computer, and your hard drive along with it.
Or in the case of wannacry or any other ransomware, it's going to see the backup drive attached
to the computer, and encrypt everything on there too!
You have a couple options here to solve this.
First, you could disconnect or turn off your external hard drive between backups.
This way if your computer gets infected, your backup is physically separated from the virus,
and is obviously safe.
The other option is to use an online cloud backup service.
There are a few out there, like Backblaze, Carbonite, Crashplan, and others.
The idea is the same for them all.
The software runs in the background, and uploads all your files to the company's servers for
backup so you don't have to worry about handling it yourself.
And every time you add a new file or update it, it will update the copy on the server.
And if some of your files do get encrypted, the service should have an option for version
history, so it will still have the good copies.
So now that you know all about Wannacry and how to protect yourself against it, you might
be wondering what's next.
Unfortunately, this is all only going to get worse, seriously.
Hackers all over the world are going to see how effective and profitable a virus can be,
and try to make their own.
They'll be working overtime to discover new vulnerabilities all the time.
And because of how effective ransomware is, I don't think we will ever see the end of
it.
I actually think that ransomware is going to literally be around forever.
Because the concept is so simple.
Even as computers get more and more powerful, hackers can just use stronger and stronger
encryption indefinitely.
It's just a matter of how they infect people in the first place.
Oh, and would you look at that, there IS already a new virus going around!
That didn't take long did it?
The latest threat is one called "EternalRocks", and believe it or not, it could be even worse
than Wannacry.
Because not only does EternalRocks use the same couple of exploits as Wannacry, it actually
uses seven different exploits found in the NSA leak.
So this way, it can infect WAY more computers, because there are so many more entry ways.
So what is this EternalRocks virus.
Well it's actually kind of interesting, because it's been spreading, but hasn't actually done
anything yet.
You see once the virus infects your computer, it spreads itself to other computers if it
can, but otherwise stays invisible to the user.
So you might not even know if you have it.
But the scary thing is that the hackers wouldn't make this virus for nothing.
It has a purpose, but they're clearly waiting for something...
One obvious possible explanation is they are trying to infect as many computers as possible,
and finally activate all at once.
If people don't know they have the virus, they aren't going to try and remove it, making
it much easier to spread.
And as I mentioned, we aren't even sure what this virus is going to do.
It can just download any set of instructions from it's creator at any time.
They could decide to launch a Ransomware campaign, or turn it into a botnet to attack major websites,
or even sell the botnet to another hacker group.
In any case, I bet we'll find out soon enough.
If we're lucky, authorities will find the virus creators and shut them down before they
can do real damage.
Until then, the best thing you can do is follow the same steps I layed out before.
Stay up to date on security patches as soon as they're released, have an antivirus installed
just in case, and of course back up as a last resort.
Unfortunately, I think most people are NOT going to do this, and as I mentioned before,
a lot of the vulnerable computers are on businesses or less developed countries with lots of old
computers.
And the hackers know this, which is why this type of thing is just going to keep happening.
So you really just need to focus on protecting yourself.
Anyway, I think that covers just about everything, really hope it was helpful for those of you
who weren't aware of these risks.
And even for those of you who were, will be even more vigilant going forward.
I'd love to hear what you think down in the comments section, and be sure to check out
other people's comments as well.
If you want to keep watching, I'll put some other videos right here to click on.
And if you want to subscribe, I got new videos every Tuesday Thursday Saturday.
Again I'm looking forward to hearing from you, so thanks for watching, I'll see you
next time, have a good one.