WannaCry ransomware attack makes Bitcoins rate surge to $2500

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Hackers who launched Wanna cry Ransomware attack might not be pleased with whatever they earned on a financial note. But do you know who actually benefited from the cyber attack related activity? It was those individuals who were active on bitcoins trading exchanges and was interested in selling off their crypto.

Thus, all this activity led to a surge of Bitcoins rate in the international market.

In April this year, 1Bitcoin rate was just $1500USD. But now, the rate has surged to $2500 as many corporate companies who were victimized with Wannacry flooded to the exchange websites to buy Bitcoins.

As per a report published in CNBC, Bitcoin rose to more than 30% to an all time high of $2,573.16 in just 12 weeks time and in the recent 4 weeks, the surge was phenomenal.

According to Coinbase, the rate of bitcoins on the exchange site increased tremendously due to an imbalance between availability and demand of bitcoins due to ransomware attack and also due to the latest announcement from Digital Currency Group
As more than 200,000 computers were targeted by Wanna cry, hackers asked businesses to pay a ransom of $300 in bitcoins in order to keep their data safe from deletion.

So, companies who had no interest in crypto started flooding exchange sites to buy bitcoins. In some cases, most of them were doing so as a precautionary measure- just to have BTC on hand to pay the hackers. And in most cases, the purchase of bitcoins was meant to quench the demands of the Wanna cry Ransomware hackers in order to free up the data from the said digital virus.

As bitcoins is one of the forms of cryptocurrency which can be transacted anonymously, in near future, all malware developers/hackers will surely clutch to the said currency for their ransom demands.

Thus, we can easily conclude that in coming years, if hackers launch cyber attacks, then companies, individuals or groups who show interest in trading bitcoins or other forms of crypto might see enormous profits in future.  

In the meantime, researchers who were probing the ransomware attack on NHS systems said that the code written by Wannacry Hackers was that of people from Chinese origin.

So, was Wannacry launched by South China-based hackers to surge the rate of bitcoins….?

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Naveen Goud is a writer at Cybersecurity Insiders covering topics such as Mergers & Acquisitions, Startups, Cyber Attacks, Cloud Security and Mobile Security

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