Thousands of office computers in Baltimore, Maryland, as well as in other US cities, were attacked by hackers who demanded to pay them $ 100,000 in Bitcoins. It is noteworthy that they used for this purpose the EternalBlue program, which was developed by the US National Security Agency (NSA), writes The New York Times .
Unknown attackers began to operate on May 7, blocking thousands of office computers and mailboxes in Baltimore, as well as causing disruptions in the processes of selling real estate and paying utility bills.
At the same time, hackers did not limit themselves to Baltimore alone. With the help of the same EternalBlue program, he suspended the work of government bodies in several other US cities from Pennsylvania to Texas. The attackers attacked the most vulnerable systems: hospitals, airports, railway and shipping companies, ATMs and factories that produce medical vaccines.
In exchange for stopping the attacks, the hackers demanded $ 100,000 in Bitcoins, but it is known that at least the Baltimore authorities refused to pay this amount.
EternalBlue was developed by the NSA to work with vulnerabilities in the Windows operating system. The program data was merged into the Network by the hacker group ShadowBrokers in April 2017. NSA technology was used during the attacks of the Wannacry and NotPetya viruses in May and June 2017.
As a result, users' computers from Russia, Ukraine, India and Taiwan were infected first. According to experts, the damage amounted to more than $ 1 billion . Wannacry paralyzed the structures of Russian and Ukrainian companies and banks, as well as devices in another 150 countries. Britain announced Russia's involvement in the attack NotPetya, the United States, in turn, blamed the attack on North Korea .
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