WannaCry worm shuts Thai online game

WannaCry worm shuts Thai online game

Popular MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) Blade & Soul by the Garena online company was the first known victim in Thailand of the WannaCry ransomware worm.
Popular MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) Blade & Soul by the Garena online company was the first known victim in Thailand of the WannaCry ransomware worm.

An online gaming server in Thailand was attacked by the WannaCrypt ransomware programme which has recently hit several countries around the world.

Garena Online (Thailand) wrote on their Facebook page (273,000 followers) on Saturday morning explaining the emergency closure of the online MMORPG game Blade & Soul. The company said the online game developed by NCsoft in South Korea was closed temporarily because its server had been attacked by the ransomware.

The company said it is in the process of getting rid of the malicious software, which propates as a network worm, and said no player information had been lost.

The company's server has kept each player's information intact for when the game comes back online, and players can immediately continue where they left off, it said. The company also said steps are being taken to improve its systems to prevent future problems and the game would be back online as soon as the maintenance work is finished.

The entrance to the game was functioning on Sunday, including links to download the software for new players.

The global cyberattack that has hit computers using Microsoft operating systems across the world used hacking tools believed to have been developed by the US National Security Agency (NSA).

Hospitals, with their often outdated IT systems and confidential patient data, are a particularly tempting target. The extortionists tricked victims into opening malicious malware attachments in spam emails.

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