United States’ National Security Agency (NSA) came under the global spotlight after unknown numbers of cyber attackers launched a global ransomware attack on Friday using one of its stolen tool named ‘Eternal Blue’ that uses a vulnerability in Microsoft windows. Within hours, more than a million computers came under attack in 74 countries across the world. This was the biggest ransomware attack in the digital history and could have done far more damage if not accidentally stopped by a young researcher at Malwaretech. The worm named ‘Wannacry’ infected computers via email systems and then blocked users’ access to the computer and its data by encrypting all the files. The malware was reportedly demanding a payment of 300 Bitcoin which is more than half a million dollar. The users were reportedly given a time within which they must comply with the demand or face data deletion. The attack has been more severe in Europe, where it led to the dysfunction of hospitals under National Health Scheme (NHS) in the United Kingdom.

While the global cyber-attack experts are looking to find the culprits behind the attack, security officials have warned of the possibility of more attacks. United States’ NSA has come under severe criticism. While Microsoft launched an emergency security patch to thwart further attacks, its President Brad Smith slammed NSA for its part in the attack. Mr. Smith, who is also the who is also the chief legal officer with the software giant, equated the NSA losing the hacking tool used in creating ‘WannaCry’ as being the same as the US military losing a Tomahawk missile. He added, “This attack provides yet another example of why the stockpiling of vulnerabilities by governments is such a problem. This is an emerging pattern in 2017……..We have seen vulnerabilities stored by the CIA show up on WikiLeaks, and now this vulnerability stolen from the NSA has affected customers around the world.”