A very compelling read published in WIRED magazine about the outbreak, disruption and costs of the NotPetya malware in 2017. The story is presented as an extract from a book by ANDY GREENBERG. He is a senior writer for WIRED magazine, where he covers security, privacy, information freedom, and hacker culture. He is the author of This Machine Kills Secrets, and in 2017 his WIRED cover story on Ukraine’s cyberwar won a Deadline Club Award from the New York Society of Professional Journalists.

The weapon’s target was Ukraine. But its blast radius was the entire world. “It was the equivalent of using a nuclear bomb to achieve a small tactical victory,”

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THE COST OF NOTPETYA

In 2017, the malware NotPetya spread from the servers of an unassuming Ukrainian software firm to some of the largest businesses worldwide, paralyzing their operations. Here’s a list of the approximate damages reported by some of the worm’s biggest victims.

  • $870,000,000
    Pharmaceutical company Merck

  • $400,000,000
    Delivery company FedEx (through European subsidiary TNT Express)

  • $384,000,000
    French construction company Saint-Gobain

  • $300,000,000
    Danish shipping company Maersk

  • $188,000,000
    Snack company Mondelēz (parent company of Nabisco and Cadbury)

  • $129,000,000
    British manufacturer Reckitt Benckiser (owner of Lysol and Durex condoms)

  • $10 billion
    Total damages from NotPetya, as estimated by the White House