Re: Large Scale Cyber-Attack Hits 40 NHS Hospitals
 

How about starting a thread showing us how to do stuff like that then matey?? ;) ;) :tu: :tu:

Re: Large Scale Cyber-Attack Hits 40 NHS Hospitals
 

One thing that strikes me as odd about the timing of this attack. It seems weird it has only happened in the run up to a General Election, where Labour are facing oblivion. Conspiracy theorists will have a field day with that one.

Re: Large Scale Cyber-Attack Hits 40 NHS Hospitals
 

Nah, Occam's razor usually applies. This was almost certainly some miscreant trying to make a name for themselves and possibly a few bob in the process without thinking about their actions. If whoever did this had anything between their ears they'd target a single organisation and not wage a speculative campaign against all comers. Imagine if a metal thief tried to steal a whole electricity pylon and the cables while the power is still on. Lots of people will notice and nothing will end very well.

Due to the nature of the exploit used it was only a matter of time and the warnings in security circles were kicking about for weeks.

Re: Large Scale Cyber-Attack Hits 40 NHS Hospitals
 

What I want to know is where do the victims of this get $300 worth of Bitcoin with which to unlock (supposedly) their machines?... :spin:

Re: Large Scale Cyber-Attack Hits 40 NHS Hospitals
 

True, but I still think the timing was just convenient.

Re: Large Scale Cyber-Attack Hits 40 NHS Hospitals
 

Can you do that with chrome ?

Re: Large Scale Cyber-Attack Hits 40 NHS Hospitals
 

Aside from the fact it takes a long time to do such things, its also incredibly expensive and complex.
(do you know how many computers the NHS has ?, last estimate I heard was in the hundreds of thousands).

Just imagine the cost of liceces for all of them, plus many would not have the hardware to support newer windows versions, so that needs replacing as well, and then there is huge amount man power needed to change them over.

Its not some 5 minute job.

Re: Large Scale Cyber-Attack Hits 40 NHS Hospitals
 

Suddenly it's down to cuts, and nothing to do with useless NHS IT managers failing to keep their patches up to date.

Re: Large Scale Cyber-Attack Hits 40 NHS Hospitals
 

You cannot keep up to date with a patch that doesnt exist. MS only released them for XP today.

Re: Large Scale Cyber-Attack Hits 40 NHS Hospitals
 

The NSA can take some of the damn rap for this for not being able to control their staff and their data.

If you're going to code vulnerabilities into an OS with stolen source code and/or people on the inside at Redmond then at least keep it under lock and key and give the key to someone who can be trusted to look after it.

Re: Large Scale Cyber-Attack Hits 40 NHS Hospitals
 

And Microsoft can carry some of the blame for having a OS full of holes. Blame can be pointed at anyone if the cap fits :)

Here's a question how many users on here use Internet Explorer instead of one of the other browsers and if you don't use Microsoft internet explorer could it be because it you feel its more vulnerable than the others to attack ?

Re: Large Scale Cyber-Attack Hits 40 NHS Hospitals
 

Re: Large Scale Cyber-Attack Hits 40 NHS Hospitals
 

I know and as I said they had several years to transition their IT infrastructure. XP's end of life was a long time coming. There was six years from the date XP was removed from the market until it's end of life date. Microsoft were making concerted effort to get them to move on.

Yes there is also a cost involved but that's the price you pay to have a functioning and secure network. There are always ongoing costs and you pay them at least in part to avoid something like this.

And there is no excuse for them not patching Windows 7 and 8.

---------- Post added at 20:56 ---------- Previous post was at 20:56 ----------

That is probably referring to Windows 7 and 8.

Re: Large Scale Cyber-Attack Hits 40 NHS Hospitals
 

To be at least a bit fair to Microsoft (which I'm not very often) the NSA were probably the ones who put it there or at least found it via nicking source code

Re: Large Scale Cyber-Attack Hits 40 NHS Hospitals
 

Windows 7, yes.
The only patch for Windows 8 was for 8.1, the patch for 8(.0) was only released with the XP patch.


Typical muddled reporting by a newspaper.
They could not provide a patch for XP, since none existed.

--------

On another note, even a patch existing does not mean it will work.
I checked the windows update logs on all my W7 PC's, and the patch for this this (which was released in March) is marked as "Failed" on one of them - which presumably means it hasnt installed. I wonder how many others failed.