Cyberattacks From WannaCry Ransomware Slow But Fears Remain (bbc.com)

Posted by msmash on Monday May 15, 2017 @02:00AM from the state-of-things dept.

WannaCry ransomware, which has spread across 150 countries, appears to be slowing down with few reports of fresh attacks in Asia and Europe on Monday. A report on BBC adds: However staff beginning the working week have been told to be careful. The WannaCry ransomware started taking over users' files on Friday, demanding $300 to restore access. Hundreds of thousands of computers have been affected so far. Computer giant Microsoft said the attack should serve as a wake-up call. BBC analysis of three accounts linked to the ransom demands suggests only about $38,000 had been paid by Monday morning.

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Don't let the $THREE_LETTER_GOV_ORG hoard exploits by bulled · 2017-05-15 02:11 · Score: 4, Insightful

Microsoft was whining about this earlier, and they are absolutely right to do so. There is no such thing as 'NOBUS'. There are far more smart people working outside $ORG than inside it and it is hubris to believe that $ORG is the only one smart enough to find any particular exploit.

With that said, Microsoft made a part of this shit sandwich by refusing to patch older, but still active operating systems until their feet were to the fire. Sure, no one should be running XP any longer, but once on a vendor lock-in treadmill it can be very hard and expensive to get off.