Massive global ransomware attack affecting 74 countries and counting

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#1781538 13-May-2017 10:59

Mspec:

That is pretty full on stuff and is going to effect a lot of innocent people. Shame on them for doing that it just so wrong on every level.

Who, the criminals for exploiting a bug to commit crimes, or the NSA for discovering it and then sitting on it for years in the arrogant belief that they and they alone would be the only ones who would have it until that belief was shattered when their own security was compromised and - whoops! - it got out into the wild along with an extensive set of example code and documentation?

iPad Pro 11" + iPhone 15 Pro Max + 2degrees 4tw!

These comments are my own and do not represent the opinions of 2degrees.

SaltyNZ

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#1781539 13-May-2017 11:04

lxsw20:

mdav056:

I continue to be amazed at the number of major NZ organizations, including universities, still running Win7. The larger the number of computers in an organization, the further behind they seem to be on OS software -- too hard basket?

It's not exactly a cheap, quick or simple exercise to upgrade OS at mid-large business level. W7 is still under support until 2020.

Having said that, though, if my work computer - which runs 32-bit (yes!) Windows 7 and has a storage device so slow that I can only assume it is based around punched-card miniaturisation technology - were to catch fire and require replacement with something a little more modern, I wouldn't cry for very long.

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These comments are my own and do not represent the opinions of 2degrees.

sir1963

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#1781574 13-May-2017 11:24

SaltyNZ:

Mspec:

That is pretty full on stuff and is going to effect a lot of innocent people. Shame on them for doing that it just so wrong on every level.

Who, the criminals for exploiting a bug to commit crimes, or the NSA for discovering it and then sitting on it for years in the arrogant belief that they and they alone would be the only ones who would have it until that belief was shattered when their own security was compromised and - whoops! - it got out into the wild along with an extensive set of example code and documentation?

And to all the morons out there who believe that there should be a "back door" for law enforcement on all devices and that encryption should be compromised so that we can catch criminals, here is your reality.

ANY flaw accidental or deliberate, will eventually be found by criminals and it WILL be used. The NSA could not even protect its own secrets, they got hacked.

These criminals don't care if you die, loose your life savings, etc , in fact that's GOOD for business, it will encourage people to pay more money , faster.

Anyone who believes otherwise, here is a test for you.

Put your hand on a work bench

Get someone to swing a hammer as hard as they can at your hand.

You pray that luck or god or some other deity will protect you.

The result will show you how effective wishful thinking actually is.

sir1963

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#1781578 13-May-2017 11:37

mdav056:

I continue to be amazed at the number of major NZ organizations, including universities, still running Win7. The larger the number of computers in an organization, the further behind they seem to be on OS software -- too hard basket?

You'd then be surprised about the number of software packages that are not Windows 10 compatible, or Office 2016 compatible, etc etc. Then there are all the instruments that use Windows 7 as instrument controllers, again no updates/upgrades, and no government department can afford to start scrapping MRI/Mass Spec/X-Ray etc etc etc etc etc equipment and buy new ones, they simply don't have the tens of millions of dollars to do this.

The bigger an organisation gets, the more complex its IT infrastructure gets and the harder it is to upgrade or change. Hell just look at the school payroll systems and how long that took and how broken is was.

darylblake

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#1781580 13-May-2017 11:38

There will be patches for windows 7.

If you run OSX or Linux then lucky you (and me)

This will encrypt network shares. And Dropbox/Google Drive.

If windows updates have been kept up to date, the likelyhood of being infected is low.

muppet

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#1781581 13-May-2017 11:40

CHECK YOUR BACKUPS WORK PEOPLE

k1w1k1d

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#1781583 13-May-2017 11:48

I work for a nationwide company with about 15 branches and have only recently had my XP PC replaced with a W7 one. We still have some PC's and service department laptops running XP.

All the company computers have full admin rights, and UAC is turned off.

Most of the company PC's and laptops also have automatic updates turned off by the IT Dept. This is so they don't have Windows Update "hassles".

I can't even get them to update IE10 to IE11 on our server. Get quite a few unsupported browser notices, so have to jump back to IE11 or Firefox on the PC to get access.

I guess all of the above makes us a likely candidate for an attack?

We did have one of our salesmen open an attachment on his laptop which encrypted one of the server drives. Luckily they were able to stop it before it got to any of the others. Drive had to be formatted and reloaded from the previous night's backup.

Sharesies

Trade NZ and US shares and funds with Sharesies (affiliate link).

dafman

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#1781584 13-May-2017 11:49

kingjj:

joker97:

Are personal computers at risk?

How to protect oneself?

http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/12/technology/ransomware-attack-nsa-microsoft/index.html

Can we not do ClickBait like posts on GZ please?

I disagree, that wasn't clickbait, that was a legitimate link to a news article on the topic.

michaelmurfy

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#1781586 13-May-2017 11:55

Geektastic: "the ransomware exploits a vulnerability in Windows"

How to protect yourself? Hmmmmm.

Hello, welcome to Mac OSX....

Installed Handbreak or Transmission recently?

No operating systems are really safe... OSX especially since it is trivial to actually target.

The comments however of this Malware on Hackernews are interesting but Bleepingcomputer have a better writeup of it Here. Also, here is a video of it in action:

Michael Murphy | https://murfy.nz
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Andib

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#1781587 13-May-2017 12:14

And this is why you should keep your system up to date!!!

The exploit that is being used to spread this was patched by Microsoft back in March under MS17-010.

Tell me again how Windows 7 is better than Windows 10.

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mdav056

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#1781589 13-May-2017 12:22

sir1963:

mdav056:

I continue to be amazed at the number of major NZ organizations, including universities, still running Win7. The larger the number of computers in an organization, the further behind they seem to be on OS software -- too hard basket?

You'd then be surprised about the number of software packages that are not Windows 10 compatible, or Office 2016 compatible, etc etc. Then there are all the instruments that use Windows 7 as instrument controllers, again no updates/upgrades, and no government department can afford to start scrapping MRI/Mass Spec/X-Ray etc etc etc etc etc equipment and buy new ones, they simply don't have the tens of millions of dollars to do this.

The bigger an organisation gets, the more complex its IT infrastructure gets and the harder it is to upgrade or change. Hell just look at the school payroll systems and how long that took and how broken is was.

Absolutely right. I have to run research some software on W7 machines because, first, it has not been updated for 8 or 10, and second, when we updated from XP to W7, it cost hundreds of thousands in new software and new hardware. So, it would be economically better actually to pay the current ransom amount (and repeat this quite a few times) than to update! Clever of them to keep the marginal cost so low...

gml