Last week, after returning from the NAPEO Capitol Summit, I had an opportunity to visit with a veteran CEO in the PEO industry who told me a story that will scare every PEO operator who reads these words.

On Friday, May 12, 2017, an unknown source launched an unprecedented Ransomware attack that is said to have hit, according to Interpol, an estimated 100,000 businesses in more than 150 countries. This Ransomware has been identified by monikers such as “WannaCry”, WannaCrypt” or “Wanna DeCryptor.”

In February 2017, Microsoft called for a “Digital Geneva Convention” which would support the codification of a set of rules that would call for the protection of users from “state cyber attacks” which would require governments to report vulnerabilities to vendors rather than “stockpile, sell or exploit them.”

Recently, vulnerabilities stored by the CIA or other intelligence agencies have been compromised and end up being broadcast by outlets such as Wikileaks.

Most troubling is that there are reports that these Ransomware attacks were developed using a hacking tool called “Eternal Blue” that were stolen from the NSA by a hacking group called Shadow Brokers.

The PEO that I earlier mentioned had an attack on their PEO software platform. The system was locked and a ransom made. The hacker asked to have the ransom paid in the form of $300 of bitcoins. To add insult to injury, the national bank’s fee was going to cost 50% of the amount of the transaction to arrange the transfer to an anonymous recipient. Fortunately, this story had a happy ending as the PEO’s IT team was able to stop the spread of the worm. The worm started at the end of the database and was working its way forward. The threat was stopped, no ransom was paid, and the PEO immediately implemented the safeguards to thwart any further attacks.

Last week, Brad Smith, the Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer, referred to the attack as a wake-up call and said that governments have “to consider the damage to civilians that comes from hoarding these vulnerabilities and the use of the exploits.”

On March 14, 2017, Microsoft released a security update that protected computers from these attacks. However, those that did not apply the security patches and updates to their systems were ultimately the victims of these Ransomware attacks.

In one Gizmodo article, experts believe that the hackers extracted less than $30,000 in total where some security experts originally believed that the global attack would yield up to $1 billion.

Unfortunately, many believe this attack was just an exploratory attack and a much larger invasion will come in the coming weeks. That the first attack was to test our strengths and that the next attack will be to test our weaknesses.

Smith says this is a wake-up call. Let’s heed his advice and quickly get our houses in order.

Sources:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3196523/security/microsoft-blames-us-stoc…
http://gizmodo.com/hackers-behind-massive-ransomware-have-made-an-embarr…
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/portal/mmpc/shared/ransomware.aspx
https://betanews.com/2017/05/14/microsoft-wannacrypt-ransomware-blame/