Google RailWire Free Wi-Fi Service Worst Affected ISP by WannaCry Ransomware: eScan

WannaCry ransomware cyber-attacks took the world by storm last week and a new report from eScan, a antivirus and content security firm, has now claimed that India was among the countries that were worst affected by the cyber-attacks. While the report has highlighted the risks associated with using public Wi-Fi, it has also revealed Google and RailTel's RailWire Wi-Fi network as the worst affected ISP in the country from the recent ransomware attacks.

Interestingly, eScan's report says that Madhya Pradesh was the worst-affected region in the country with around 32.63 percent of the total ransomware attacks detected within the country, followed by Maharashtra at 18.84 percent and Delhi at third position with 8.76 percent share. Notably, the report says that RailWire, the free Wi-Fi service launched by RailTel, is the most affected network from WannaCry and other ransomware and has 32.14 percent of the entire share among the networks.

"We have every reason to believe that majority of the ransomware attacks which happened during the last week, within India, would have been averted had Railtel implemented the stop-gap measure of blocking SMB traffic," eScan said in its report.

eScan has advised users to exercise caution before using RailTel's free Wi-Fi service or any free Wi-Fi service for that matter. The report points out that while the government is installing free Wi-Fi spots, it needs to validate the internal security of these networks.

There is no doubt that the advisory issued by the firm does make complete sense and users need to be careful while using free Wi-Fi networks. There is no such thing as free lunch and maybe same rule now applies for wireless Internet networks as well.