NHS Cyber attack!

[BrilloPad]

don't do it?

While there is strong and stable anti-virus, all will be fine.

[MrMarkyMark]

don't do it?

You rang?

[dotcom12]

supposedly the criminals only want $300 to turn off the ransomware

[AtW]

supposedly the criminals only want $300 to turn off the ransomware

Per PC.

And it might get infected again...

[NotAllThere]

And they're criminals. Not to be trusted. Shame the government decided to deter IT professionals from working in the NHS.

[BrilloPad]

And they're criminals. Not to be trusted. Shame the government decided to deter IT professionals from working in the NHS.

The government has seen those in IT as glorified typists for at least 30 years. And their hatred of us is increasing.

Its a far bigger danger than Brexit.

[Hobosapien]

Can't be a*sed to check the details but saw summit about a vulnerability in MS allowed a virus to be sent by email and you don't even have to open it.

Yep, apparently it has a worm capability to spread over an unsecure network without each Windows PC user having to invite it onto the PC by opening an email etc.

Exploit patched since mid March according to news item but I guess not applicable to XP so the vulnerability continues.

Should be even more legacy work migrating systems from old no-longer supported MS products now.

[BrilloPad]

This would never have happened if they had used macs.

NF

[woohoo]

BBC had a security expert on breakfast, sounded like a clueless idiot. If this is the standard of security consultant I'm thinking of getting into this racket.

[Hobosapien]

Bitcoin is a poor choice for ransom payment, it can be traced easily enough.

Blockchain would be an excellent use case for keeping NHS records. Encrypted end to end whilst keeping data available across the entire network in multiple nodes.

Even if it was hard to trace, the sudden worldwide demand/shortage for bitcoins to pay the ransom will point to the perp(s) who surely would have stocked up on bitcoins to sell at a surging mark-up to the desperadoes, so they get the cash from the bitcoin sale then get the bitcoins back when the ransom is paid.

I suppose rather than the perp(s) plan not working due to not enough bitcoins available to unlock all the affected machines in time, it won't work due to all affected having a disaster recovery plan that includes restoring from backups. Presuming there's no known bug/exploit in the ransomware that allows the files to be unlocked without paying up first.