Monkeys beware really dangerous ransomware X 2

Attack halted: 'Accidental hero' finds kill switch to stop spread of ransomware cyber-attack

Only Windows systems that were either unsupported like XP or had't been patched since May were affected.

 

One more reason to ditch Windows and IOS wherever possible for Internet connected systems. Expect future attacks to target IOS and not just Windows. If all you need is web browsing and basic office productivity then Linux will do it just as well and twice as fast.

 

Yes, because Microsoft wants to force everyone to 10.

 

I'm going to go out on a limb here. Mr. Hero might know something more about the exploit than accidentally finding the kill switch.
Lives with his parents .. works for a threat intelligence co.
Sounds like a prototype that escaped the sandbox.
just musing out loud.

 

FedEx Service Alerts

FedEx Express National Service Disruption



Saturday, May 13, 2017

FedEx experienced interference with some of our systems which caused disruptions to the FedEx Express Memphis Hub sort operations. We immediately implemented contingency plans to minimize the impact to our customers. We regret any inconvenience this has caused. Consistent with the provisions of the FedEx Service Guide, the money-back guarantee is not in effect for FedEx Express packages due for delivery on May 13, 2017.

 

Makes me wonder if the black hats who stole this from the NSA were in fact the NSA. Interesting that the release was timed to do damage in Russia and Europe but not North America. Perhaps a test that could be blamed elsewhere...

Would the NSA really advertise it had been compromised and malware stolen? Almost like a drunk reporting his car stolen a few minutes after the crash.

 

sigh, remember when the worse thing to get in your E-Mail was an offer to send ya a mil from yer friendly Nigerian??

 

Was North America hit as hard as Europe or on a similar scale?

 

No. The only North American company/facility/entity that has gone public with any kind of large impact was FedEx (that I'm aware of). If there are more they haven't been big news.

 

This is a good thing. You are all looking at it as a bad thing but I tell you, issues like this force people to evolve and become tougher. Its like getting a cold or flu, your system either recovers or it doesn't. Evolve or die. It makes you tough.

 

It's going to come down to IT governance practices. While there are some small/midsized businesses that continue to run old software due to it cost, most of them tend to be more nimble than the big corps.

Big corporations have software release cycles, test and deployment practices that delay patching machines for months if not years. That makes them vulnerable to exploits such as these.

In a previous life we had a large NA corp with 400 franchise locations and maybe 100 corp locations and most of them were running Windows Vista (which was an upgrade from XP) about 3 years ago. I heard that they finally moved to windows 7 last year. They'd run our software in a sandbox for a year before they'd bless it and allow their locations to install it (from a corp provided DVD as opposed to downloading the service patched version). Yep corporations and governments are going to continue to shoot themselves in the head .. pretty much until they are dead.