After WannaCray, another Ramsomware Petya aka Petrwrap aka wowsmith123456 has spread to many European countries starting with Ukraine. In Ukraine, it has caused wide-spread infection already affecting many corporations and government agencies.

But it doesn’t seem to stop and as per information pouring in, is spreading to more and more countries worldwide. Petya attack has already impacted computers in hospitals, supermarkets, banks and more. It uses NSA’s ETERNALBLUE exploit. Once it has infected your system, it encrypts your valuable data and asks a payment in Bitcoin to decrypt it.

It is not difficult to protect your PC from Ransomware attacks if you keep your system updated with Windows updates provided by Microsoft. If you are not one of those who likes to keep your PCs update with the latest software you may be at risk.

But you can still protect your PC by following some easy steps as mentioned below.

How to protect your PC:

Now, if you are running a supported Windows PC, which means one running Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 or even unsupported Windows versions like Windows XP and Windows 8, you can protect your PC from this attack easily. Here are few things you need to know or do,

  1. Microsoft pushed a Security update in March that brings patches to protect your PC from this Ransomware. All you need to do is to check whether you have MS17-010 installed on your PC. Go to this page and get the KB number against your Windows version. Though Microsoft may have already pushed this update but if it is not installed you can either get via “Windows Update” or install it manually by going to the Microsoft Update Catalog.
  2. For downloading above Security updates for unsupported Windows XP and Windows 8 versions, click here.
  3. Open Windows Defender  and check for updates, if you use it. Enable real-time protection. If you don’t use Windows Defender, update your Antivirus software. If you don’t use an Anti-Virus, at least activate Windows Defender.

  4. Disable SMB1 (SMB 1.0) protocol to protect your Windows PC from Ransomware attack

  5. Don’t open suspicious attachments sent from unknown senders. This is the easiest way to spread such ransomware.
  6. Take a backup and keep it safe on a separate storage device

Image Credit: Twitter

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