Cyber attack spreads worldwide

[bester69]

ransomware cyber attack spreads worldwide
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05 ... ng-ransom/

Dominic Marley, a hospital doctor in the Manchester area, said it would be a “miracle if no one comes to harm”.

Poor people affected in hospitals!!

More reasons for using Linux?

[VentGrey]

Apparently Linux systems are vulnerable too, in my compulsive paranoia I disabled root acc and set all my firewalls to high, and im scanning every 2 hours, I really don't want some ransomware here

[RU55EL]

[...]More reasons for using Linux?

More reasons not to use Windows XP!

[alan stone]

When a government can't keep its weapons locked up they oftentimes "phone home" and people get smacked in the face with a boomerang decorated with a label of its origin.

[kopper]

[...]More reasons for using Linux?

More reasons not to use Windows XP!

Interestingly enough, MS provides security patches for XP and 2003 as well. The impact is so massive that they basically had to but still, good for them I think.

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/msr ... t-attacks/

[Lysander]

Apparently Linux systems are vulnerable too, in my compulsive paranoia I disabled root acc and set all my firewalls to high, and im scanning every 2 hours, I really don't want some ransomware here

Yes, on another forum one user said they were running Mint and they still got it, I don't know if that's true though. EDIT: Apparently it's not true, it was only written for Windows.

ransomware cyber attack spreads worldwide
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05 ... ng-ransom/

Dominic Marley, a hospital doctor in the Manchester area, said it would be a “miracle if no one comes to harm”.

Poor people affected in hospitals!!

My current day job is in the NHS and we were using XP in our trust till about 2015. The biggest problem is the users though, most admins and clinicians are very IT illiterate. They know how to use email, Word, the software for their clinic and that's it. It's highly likely that many would open an email attachment without thinking about it or understanding what they could be doing. As for the system admins, I can't really comment, I hardly ever come into contact with them.

[Lysander]

Update, it can affect Linux. Through WINE

https://twitter.com/hackerfantastic/sta ... 5787925505

And also this user managed to infect his Gentoo install by running Firefox as root.

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1060828.html

[dasein]

Can't be. This OP has repeatedly declared Linux invulnerable to malware.

(Of course, since WINE has also been shown to be a viable vector for this particular attack, that means that this OP is particularly vulnerable to infection.)

[debiman]

Update, it can affect Linux. Through WINE
https://twitter.com/hackerfantastic/sta ... 5787925505

"truly this is the year of the Linux desktop"

And also this user managed to infect his Gentoo install by running Firefox as root.
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1060828.html

nice.
i wonder why people feel the need to profile themselves, that they are still able to "talk the talk" and give the impression that they are "on top of it"... when it's so clear that the damage is done and all energy is best spent into fixing it...

[edbarx]

I remember several years ago, my google mail account warned me an email attachment could be a virus. My inquisitve curiosity was such that I decided I wanted to see its innards. So, I downloaded the attachment without executing it and opened it in a text editor. Seeing the code, it was clear there was something fishy about it.

Nevertheless, this didn't infect my computer.

[phenest]

I heard this on the news today. However, it is old news. I'm came across this ransomware on a friends computer several years ago. It's very old and the author has long since gone. Anybody who falls victim to this is basically screwed. Bye, bye data.

[pcalvert]

An alert from US-CERT:
TA17-132A: Indicators Associated With WannaCry Ransomware

Phil

[Bulkley]

Just out of curiosity, how is this malware bypassing root security on the affected systems? Are there big outfits allowing all users root access? Or is the nature of the threat such that it doesn't need root access?

[Lysander]

I heard this on the news today. However, it is old news. I'm came across this ransomware on a friends computer several years ago. It's very old and the author has long since gone. Anybody who falls victim to this is basically screwed. Bye, bye data.

I've read that it's a bad idea to pay ransomware since there's no guarantee you'll get your data. I take it that's the case here then.

One question, if it's old, how has it reappeared?

[dasein]

Some J. Random Hacker's Twitter feed notwithstanding, it's not as clear to me as it could be that Linux is actually vulnerable.

To be clear, I'm not saying yes or no, I'm saying that it's unclear.

That said, here is some good news...
http://thehackernews.com/2017/05/wannac ... ndows.html

And some bad news....
http://thehackernews.com/2017/05/wannac ... ttack.html

Anyone who (a) isn't infected and (b) hasn't backed up in the last 24 hours, is, simply put, an idiot.