EternalBlue Infections Persist

The infamous EternalBlue exploit used in the game-changing WannaCry and NotPetya cyberattacks just won't die: new research shows 300,000 machines around the globe suffering repeat infections of the attack code.

EternalBlue, pilfered from the NSA and leaked by the mysterious Shadow Brokers group, abuses a flaw in Microsoft's Server Message Block, SMB1, protocol. Researchers at Avira found a large number of machines - mainly running versions of Windows that don't get updates and the older SMB2 protocol getting infected over and over with EternalBlue.

"There are still significant numbers of repeatedly infected machines more than a year after the big WannaCry and Petya attacks," said Mikel Echevarria-Lizarraga, senior virus analyst in the Avira Protection Lab, which is currently deactivating some 14,000 computers per day with the vulnerable SMB1 protocol.

"Once the SMB1 protocol is deactivated, we don't see the same machines affected again and again with this problem," Echevarria-Lizarraga said. According to Avira, most of the infected machines are in Indonesia, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, Egypt, Russia, China, Philippines, India, and Turkey.

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