The WannaCry ransomware (also known as WannaCrypt or WannaCryptor) made the news everywhere in the world because the way it infected millions of Windows computers in nearly 130 countries. If the security researchers had not found the hidden kill switch for the ransomware, it would have continued to spread further. Later new variants without the kill switch were also released but by then Microsoft along with many security products vendors had taken measures to defend computers against the vulnerabilities used by WannaCrypt.
Earlier we published about the 360 NSA Cyber Weapons Defense Tool that scans your Windows system for the vulnerabilities that were being used by NSA and then were made public in March of this year. Now ESET has also released a tool using which you can check if your Windows PC is affected by EternalBlue – the name given to the vulnerability used by the WannaCrypt ransomware.
The ESET EternalBlue Vulnerability Checker is a simple CLI (command line interface) tool does more than check if you have installed the patches released by Microsoft. It actually checks the versions of files that should be updated through the patches. When you launch this program, it quickly tells you whether your system is safe from EternalBlue or if it is affected by it.
If your system is affected, it also gives you guidelines that you should run Windows Update and update your system. The tool also hints that you can also manually download the update from Windows Updates Catalog website. You can read instructions on how to patch your Windows PC against the EternalBlue vulnerability to see how you can install these patches manually. If you run the ESET tool after installing the updates, it will show that your system is safe from this vulnerability.
You can download ESET EternalBlue Vulnerability Checker from http://support.eset.com/alert6442/#eternalblue.