Thanks NSA

[simpdog]

Massive ransomware attack going on.

http://thehackernews.com/2017/05/wan...re-unlock.html

cliffs
-apparently a hacking group stole tools from NSA including a 0 day windows exploit
-Microsoft released patch but still tons not patched
-shutting down hospitals, businesses, etc.

-makes you pay $300 or it encrypts your files and you lose them forever.

Via bitcoins obviously!

[tyde]

I LOVE IT

GET ME A LAWN CHAIR AND A SIX PACK TO WATCH THE BIG SHOW

[FPS_Russia]

Literally minutes ago I had a family member leave to the hospital to have a baby, hmmm.

[GringoStar]

Massive ransomware attack going on.

http://thehackernews.com/2017/05/wan...re-unlock.html

cliffs
-apparently a hacking group stole tools from NSA including a 0 day windows exploit
-Microsoft released patch but still tons not patched
-shutting down hospitals, businesses, etc.

-makes you pay $300 or it encrypts your files and you lose them forever.

Via bitcoins obviously!

This is interesting, but so many of these exploits rely on the fact that many people are operating with outdated software, as well as outdated handshakes.

Years ago, when working on a data migration project involving hundreds of thousands of lives onto an Affordable Care Act private exchange, we ran into many problems because our Midwestern client (a giant healthcare provider) had many of its computers operating on Windows XP Pro.. in 2012! XP was released in 2005, btw.

Moral: these articles rarely tell you the demographics of who got hit and/or what backwater company was cracked.

Also, it's intereting to note that almost 10 million Americans still use dial-up.

[sonatine]

thehackernews.com is a garbage aggregation portal run by human/rat hybrid street shitters (indians) who will rebrand it to thelesbianastronautnews.com should that trend harder than infosec.

on the few occasion they dont literally cut/paste actual security articles, they manage to butcher them beyond hope.

throwing shade at the NSA for a zero day is also frankly grotesque considering google has released what, 20 zero days for every leaked(!!!) NSA attack tool? just putting that in perspective.

also 10m americans dont use dialup but indians cant count so here we are, and the biggest high profile victim to date is a hospital in UK, not the states.

[GringoStar]

thehackernews.com is a garbage aggregation portal run by human/rat hybrid street shitters (indians) who will rebrand it to thelesbianastronautnews.com should that trend harder than infosec.

on the few occasion they dont literally cut/paste actual security articles, they manage to butcher them beyond hope.

throwing shade at the NSA for a zero day is also frankly grotesque considering google has released what, 20 zero days for every leaked(!!!) NSA attack tool? just putting that in perspective.

also 10m americans dont use dialup but indians cant count so here we are, and the biggest high profile victim to date is a hospital in UK, not the states.

Agree about zero days.

Study is a few years old and is slightly less than 10mil, but Pew seems to agree with me on this one: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank...al-up-at-home/

[sonatine]

Years ago, when working on a data migration project involving hundreds of thousands of lives onto an Affordable Care Act private exchange, we ran into many problems because our Midwestern client (a giant healthcare provider) had many of its computers operating on Windows XP Pro.. in 2012! XP was released in 2005, btw.

also and i expect you know this but when you see major institutions running ancient OSs, more often than not its because they have proprietary software that was never ported to contemporary hardware/OS's, usually because the vendor went out of business, the software was discontinued, etc.

everything from banks to the NYC subway system have IBM OS/2 mainframes in use, and those were considered collectors items 20 years ago. a lot of molecular modeling software only runs on RISC cpus, so a lot of apex DNA labs still run IRIX pizza boxes. etc etc.

[Mintjewlips]

Promises promises software.........backdoors=blowback, hard to call them intelligent when they are so arrogant.

[sonatine]

Promises promises software.........backdoors=blowback, hard to call them intelligent when they are so arrogant.

are you drunk? its barely 4:30pm..

[Mintjewlips]

Promises promises software.........backdoors=blowback, hard to call them intelligent when they are so arrogant.

are you drunk? its barely 4:30pm..

 

it's 5 o'clock somewhere (6:35pm here)

[sonatine]

like again not to beat a dead horse but to get inconvenienced by WhyCry you need to have an attacking host be able to reach your SMB services (ports 139/445). for starters, every cable internet carrier on earth blocks those ports, but whatever.

second off the only reason they are using that particular NSA exploit is because its low hanging fruit they want to scoop up before they pivot to this:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/...y/4022344.aspx

which is going to be literally a full exponent larger on the bloodbath scale.

[hongkonger]

Literally minutes ago I had a family member leave to the hospital to have a baby, hmmm.

If it comes out black, the wife was hacked.

[sonatine]

This just popped up in Russian gov offices. Whoever did this better pray the FBI finds them first.

[Sanlmar]

Microsoft CNE/CNA's remind me of those mechanics in Cuba who kept those 50's Chevys in such fine tune.

[The_Lurker]

I have an EX that is the IT director for a major newspaper That is still running a 30 year old proprietary accounting software. The newspaper has to keep employed an $100k a year expert to keep it running, and it has to be run 100% off line, so every employee who uses it has to have 2 desktop systems. This is a very common problem across many specialized industries. BTW the software vendor went out of business 25 year ago.

[Sanlmar]

DEC VMS was an absolutely bulletproof fault tolerant OS that appealed to banks for ATM's and other industries with mission critical needs.

Digital Equipment died long ago but VMS installations ran long, long afterward and there were/are a few companies that still tend those fields.

I got tangled up with one such company, Process Software.

I am old enough to remember the release of the first IBM PC. There were actually 2 versions of OS available. One was a version of VMS and the other was that piece of shit MS DOS. Microsoft is a great marketing company and the world never recovered.

DEC was a company of engineers, run by engineers who made things for engineers. I took apart their PC's. Exquisitely (over) engineered. Ungodly expensive. Digital's Ken Olsen thought PC's were a fad and the rest is history.

VMS & the Alpha chip was Herculean.

MS = Kluge

[GringoStar]

DEC VMS was an absolutely bulletproof fault tolerant OS that appealed to banks for ATM's and other industries with mission critical needs.

Digital Equipment died long ago but VMS installations ran long, long afterward and there were/are a few companies that still tend those fields.

I got tangled up with one such company, Process Software.

I am old enough to remember the release of the first IBM PC. There were actually 2 versions of OS available. One was a version of VMS and the other was that piece of shit MS DOS. Microsoft is a great marketing company and the world never recovered.

DEC was a company of engineers, run by engineers who made things for engineers. I took apart their PC's. Exquisitely (over) engineered. Ungodly expensive. Digital's Ken Olsen thought PC's were a fad and the rest is history.

VMS & the Alpha chip was Herculean.

MS = Kluge

Before my time, but I actually learned to code on an MS-DOS portal for hospital systems that my mom used at work. Used it to file away records when I was in grade school on days off.

They eventually moved to a more sophisticated EDI protocol and finally just moved to more modern 3rd party SaaS in 2015.

These aircraft carrier style companies take a long time to turn around.

[hongkonger]

DEC VMS was an absolutely bulletproof fault tolerant OS that appealed to banks for ATM's and other industries with mission critical needs.

Digital Equipment died long ago but VMS installations ran long, long afterward and there were/are a few companies that still tend those fields.

I got tangled up with one such company, Process Software.

I am old enough to remember the release of the first IBM PC. There were actually 2 versions of OS available. One was a version of VMS and the other was that piece of shit MS DOS. Microsoft is a great marketing company and the world never recovered.

DEC was a company of engineers, run by engineers who made things for engineers. I took apart their PC's. Exquisitely (over) engineered. Ungodly expensive. Digital's Ken Olsen thought PC's were a fad and the rest is history.

VMS & the Alpha chip was Herculean.

MS = Kluge

Pretty damn good summary. You can still find DECs all over the place especially in academia. They're iron horses.

[YUUP]

Imagine living in the second world ....

[sonatine]

A botnet research org discovered a long, random-string domain name referenced after decompiling the malware, so they registered it because lol why not.

Punch line: it was a hard coded killswitch; the malware stops running if it queries that domain and gets a response. So basically they just ended the malware campaign for about $11.