What the WannaCry Ransomware Attack Means for Congress

"Last week, a crippling wave of ransomware spread across over 200 countries, locking up data until victims paid several hundred dollars in bitcoin. Hardest hit in terms of number of infections was Russia, but the damage also hit much closer to home: our friends in the United Kingdom saw their National Health Service ground to a halt as hospitals pulled the plug on their computers to prevent the malware from spreading.

While this ransomware affected some systems at FederalExpress, as a nation we appear to have gotten off quite lucky. Why? For one, we do not know much about the targeting of this attack. It is possible that, for whatever reason, the perpetrators chose not to target many U.S. systems. Another reason is that the prevalence of using pirated versions of previous editions of Windows (thereby disqualifying oneself from Microsoft’s free security upgrades) is much less in the United States than it is in China, Russia, and so many other countries..."