The WannaCry ransomware attack took the world by storm a few days back and as tools have now been released to kill it dead in its tracks, more information is being revealed which details how the attack was carried out and how it spread so quickly. Kaspersky Lab, a well-regarded cybersecurity firm, has released a new report which shows that WannaCry victims were mostly running Windows 7.
Microsoft took a lot of flak in the immediate aftermath of the attack due to the policies that it has on supporting older versions of Windows. Many suggested that lack of security support for Windows XP enabled the ransomware attack to spread quickly, but Kaspersky’s report shows that it wasn’t entirely due to that.
The report shows that majority of the systems that were affected by the WannaCry ransomware attack are running Windows 7. Microsoft still supports Windows 7 and regularly sends out security updates for the operating system.
98 percent of all affected computers were running Windows 7 while Windows XP and 2008 R2 Server saw infection rates of 0.1 percent and 1.5 percent respectively.
Microsoft stopped supporting Windows XP a couple of years ago and Kaspersky’s report shows that only an insignificant number of Windows XP computers were affected by this attack. Microsoft has since released an emergency patch for Windows XP as well to protect it against WannaCry.
#WannaCry infection distribution by the Windows version. Worst hit – Windows 7 x64. The Windows XP count is insignificant. pic.twitter.com/5GhORWPQij
— Costin Raiu (@craiu) May 19, 2017