You must be aware of the new WannaCry ransomware variants that have emerged in the past few hours. We are trying to describe and share some knowledge on how to protect yourself against the WannaCry ransomware. We sense that this is in the interests of our WordPress community as well.

The global ransomware campaign in a mere few hours after it started has now infected over 10,000 organisations and 200,000 individuals in 150 countries. This includes the UK National Health System. We expect new variants to emerge all week that continue to exploit the vulnerability in SMB that WannaCry has been using. It is critical that Windows users protect themselves immediately against this threat.

How to protect yourself

1. If you use Windows, install the patch that Microsoft has released to block the specific exploit that the WannaCry ransomware is using. You can find instructions on this page in the Microsoft Knowledge Base. You can also directly download the patches for your OS from the Microsoft Update Catalog.
2. If you are using an unsupported version of Windows like Windows XP, Windows 2008 or Server 2003, you can get the patches for your unsupported OS from the Update Catalog. We do recommend that you update to a supported version of Windows as soon as possible.
3. Update your Antivirus software definitions. Most AV vendors have now added detection capability to block WannaCry.
4. If you don’t have anti-virus software enabled on your Windows machine, we recommend you enable Windows Defender which is free.
5. Backup regularly and make sure you have offline backups. That way, if you are infected with ransomware, it can’t encrypt your backups.

The second wave of attacks appears to have just started within the past few hours. This is going to be a rough week for Windows users. We recommend you get the word out by sharing this post to help keep friends and family secure.