In May 2017, hundreds of thousands of computers and networks became infected with the notorious WannaCry ransomware.
Thousands of people noticed their computers demanding a ransom or lose all their files. The ransomware had infected their devices, encrypted their files and was asking for money in Bitcoin to retrieve those files. Millions of files were lost. It was very bad.
Because it was among the first large scale attacks that including the particularly nasty ransomware strain of malware, the WannaCry name is well known. And that is why over the weekend spammers have been capitalising on the name to panic email recipients into sending them money.
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A surge of reports suggest spammers are trying to trick victims into believing their devices have been infected with ransomware. The emails claim that the recipient’s device has been infected by WannaCry ransomware, and the recipient only has until tomorrow to pay the spammers lots of money in Bitcoin or the WannaCry ransomware gets activated and they lose their files.
Don’t worry if you got such an email. It’s a bluff. Your device isn’t affected. The email is simply trying to alarm email recipients into thinking their devices are infected with a well-known example of ransomware, when they’re not. The crooks are hoping recipients will pay up, even though they’ve not really been infected.
The best course of action is to simply ignore the email. Scammers played out a similar scheme on email users in the days following the WannaCry attacks, and this latest surge of emails is just doing the same.