Recently you might have heard all over the news channels the reports of the National Health Service (NHS) being ‘cyberattacked’ by hackers using ransomware to try and get payments. Parts of the NHS were affected during the initial outbreak of the ransomware called WannaCry, or as it is also sometimes referred to as WanaCrypt0r 2.0, WannaCry and WCry. It was not just the NHS systems that were infected; the massive shipping company FedEx Corp, German railway operator Deutsche Bahn, Spanish telecommunications company Telefonica, Nissan, and Hitachi were amongst the high profile companies to be hit by the attack. The list goes on as around 300,000 more computers in 150 countries were also infected, with Russia being the worst hit.

The ransomware has come about when hackers stole a hacking tool called ‘Eternal Blue’ which was developed by American military organisation the National Security Agency (NSA) to gain access to all computers operating with Microsoft Windows in order to stop criminal activities such as terrorism. Although it is not known for sure who is responsible for the WannaCry with most people strongly linking it to a group of hackers from North Korea. But security firm Flashpoint have suggested after linguistic analysis that it may have emerged from Southern China through the help of machine translations services.

On their blog post, Flashpoint say that after analysing the ransom note sent to victims demanding payment, the person who wrote the note was “native or at least fluent” in Chinese. They also go on to say that after looking at all of the 28 notes sent in different languages only 3 out of the 28 were actually written by a human; the English, Chinese Simplified and traditional version; with the remaining 25 being translated from English with the help of fast translation software Google Translate.

The way in which WannaCry works is often through a technique known as ‘phishing’ where an email is sent out fooling people into opening the attachments which contain malware, once opened it spreads onto your computer locking your files and encrypting them and the message or ‘ransom note’ appears demanding $300-600 payment through bitcoin in order to re-access your files. If not paid after a few days WannaCry threatens to delete your files. Although some experts have urged against paying as it is believed there is no guarantee once paid and such a big financial translation could see more attacks like this occurring.

Ever wondered how to create a new word? Ever thought how difficult it would be to actually get that ‘created’ word officiated? Ever thought if the translation to another language would make sense at all? Well an eight year old primary school student named Matteo has done just that. The story reported on BBC trending is of an Italian primary school teacher Margherita Aurora who is from the small commune Copparo of Emilia-Romagna. Margherita notices a word that has no official meaning written in Matteo’s school assignment.

The word in question used by the eight year old was “petaloso” which is a word he uses to describe a blooming flower. Petaloso would be the Italian translation of explaining that the flower is “full of petals” which actually makes complete grammatical sense as it is the combination of the Italian word for petal “petalo” with the suffix “-oso” which is translated into “full of”. Although the word is functional there was no official meaning to it in the Italian dictionary.

There does exist a direct English translation for the word “petaloso”, “petalous” is the direct and fast translation, a word that has been used from the 18^th century. The absence of this word from the Italian dictionary gave Margherita the idea that her student Matteo had invented a new word. With the help and encouragement of Margherita, Matteo wrote to the Accademia della Crusca, an Italian language institute created in 1583, to get their opinion about the word.

They got a positive reply from one of the Crusca’s top language experts who replied, “The word you invented is well formed and could be used in the Italian language,” and “It is beautiful and clear.” But also warned that in order to be considered an official word of the Italian language, a number of the population must first need to understand it and use the word “petaloso”, the word must be spread and only then could it be considered and official Italian word.

Margherita was so moved by the Crusca’s linguist replay that she shared the images of the letter accompanied with the caption “this is worth more than a thousand Italian lessons” on Facebook which rather unexpectedly triggered a campaign to make “petaloso” an official word. This post has been shared more than 80,000 times on Facebook and on Twitter #petaloso has been used more than 40,000 times which saw it become a trending topic in Italy and briefly made an appearance in the top worldwide trend.

The Crusca joined the campaign by retweeting the word as well as the Zanichelli publishing house who are the publishers of Italy’s most used dictionaries, they even talked about the possibility of “petaloso” being included in the next edition. Also Rome’s tourist authorities advertised the city’s rose garden as the “petaloso” rose garden. Even the Italian Prime Minister recognised Matteo’s efforts and congratulated him.

This story just goes to show the importance of social media, that one eight year olds imaginative word could now be close to being considered as an official word.

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