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Almost All WannaCry Victims Were Running Windows 7 (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: According to data released today by Kaspersky Lab, roughly 98 percent of the computers affected by the ransomware were running some version of Windows 7, with less than one in a thousand running Windows XP. 2008 R2 Server clients were also hit hard, making up just over 1 percent of infections. Windows 7 is still by far the most common version of Windows, running on roughly four times as many computers as Windows 10 worldwide. Since more recent versions of Windows aren't vulnerable to WannaCry, it makes sense that most of the infections would hit computers running 7. Still, the stark disparity emphasizes how small of a role Windows XP seems to have played in spreading the infection, despite early concerns about the outdated operating system. The new figures also bear on the debate over Microsoft's patching practices, which generated significant criticism in the wake of the attack. Microsoft had released a public patch for Windows 7 months before the attack, but the patch for Windows XP was only released as an emergency measure after the worst of the damage had been done. The patch was available earlier to paying Custom Support customers, but most XP users were left vulnerable, each unpatched computer a potential vector to spread the ransomware further. Still, Kaspersky's figures suggest that unpatched XP devices played a relatively small role in the spread of the ransomware.
Microsoft had released a public patch for Windows 7 months before the attack,...
What doesn't get reported often enough is that pirated versions of Windows cannot be patched and most of the infected computers were running pirated versions.
If a patch was released months ago, why did so many people not install it?
Someone wrote an automated tool to install all KB's to fix Windows Update for Win 7:
https://answers.microsoft.com/...
Worked on all 3 machines I used it on, in various WU states (endless loop, failing to install).
Microsoft broke Windows Update on Windows 7 soon after the Windows 10 Upgrade windows closed with some botched updates.
Windows 7 computers that didn't take the update were treated with a runaway svchost.exe processes that consumed 100% of a core and near a GB of RAM while halting future updates at the same time. The only way to get performance back was to disable Windows Update. Even reloading Windows 7 from scratch didn't solve the problem. Updates would never come, and svchost.exe was stuck at 100% and massive amounts of memory. Microsoft let this problem linger for months probably in the hopes that users would upgrade to 10. Others here have suggested that it was due to MS not releasing roll-up updates and letting the library grow beyond what Windows Update was able to process. Since the April 2017 security patch Microsoft has begun roll-up updates to solve this problem.
This is 100% Microsoft's fault.