By Dipo Olowookere
The wave of cyber-attacks around the globe has forced an American multinational technology company, Microsoft, to re-releasing security updates for some older versions of its Windows platforms.
On Friday, a global cyber-attack called ransomware wreaked havoc on several reputable establishments in the UK, Russia and as at today, it has hit about 150 countries. Those behind these attacks are yet to be unravelled.
But investigators are now working non-stop to hunt down those responsible for the Wanna Decryptor ransomware, also known as WannaCry.
In March 2017, Microsoft published an update to address some security issues, but Friday’s incident has made it to take the latest step.
In a blog post on its website, Microsoft, founded by American businessman, Mr Bill Gates, explained that, “Those who have Windows Update enabled are protected against attacks on this vulnerability.”
But it emphasised that, “For those organizations who have not yet applied the security update, we suggest you immediately deploy Microsoft Security Bulletin MS17-010.”
“We are working with customers to provide additional assistance as this situation evolves,” the company stated.
It noted that, “Some of our customers are running versions of Windows that no longer receive mainstream support.
“That means those customers will not have received the above mentioned security update released in March.”
“Given the potential impact to customers and their businesses, we made the decision to make the security update for platforms in custom support only, Windows XP, Windows 8, and Windows Server 2003, broadly available,” it added.
