Turkey barely affected by international cyberattack, Turkish Communication Authority says

ANKARA

Turkey has recovered from the recent worldwide cyberattack, which affected 72 countries, and was barely affected by it, the Turkish Communication Authority said on May 16, state-run Anadolu Agency has reported. 

Participating in an event named “High Maturity in Software,” Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK) head Ömer Fatih Sayan said precautions had been taken to minimize the effect of the “WanaCrypt0r 2.0” cyberattack. 

The massive cyberattack, leveraging hacking tools believed to have been developed by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), has infected tens of thousands of computers in 72 countries, disrupting Britain’s health system and global shipper FedEx among others on May 13.

Sayan said the BTK had completed a number of studies foreseeing the same weakness in the Windows Operating System before the cyberattack in March and April.

“These studies helped to minimize possible damage in Turkey. We scanned more than 16 million devices as part of preventive studies against weakness and vulnerability after an announcement issued on March 21. We urged system administrators and users of over 28,079 systems in which we detected vulnerability,” he said, stressing that the cyberattack threat was ongoing.

“Turkey has emerged from the first wave of cyberattacks with little harm. Our specialists reported that the cyberattack could change methodologically and formally,” Sayan added. 

He emphasized that system administrators should urgently update their systems. 

“System administrators should urgently update their Windows systems and should close Windows’ Server Message Block [SMB] protocols when they are not using it. They should also use updated anti-virus programs and should not open unknown e-mails, especially attachments,” he said.