421–430 of 505 posts
We really are living in the future. My condolences to the NHS, but what a time to be alive.
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This malware is well written, and uses strong encryption. I would suggest that you and your father spend the evening reading up on backup practices, and reconsider the value proposition of open source software. I hope I am not coming off as a smug jerk. My hope is that rather than becoming frustrated and demoralized after an evening of fruitless hacking, you and your uni will recover, and become resilient against fut…
There is at least one cryptolocker variant that supports Linux.
I'm intrigued because I've seen people claim that "linux is just as vulnerable as windows to user stupidity," but I have a hard time understanding how. The vast majority of windows infections occur because somebody got tricked into running an executable file.
On every Linux distro I've used, scripts and binaries need the executable bit set or be explicitly run through the desired shell. As far as I know, no browser sets the executable bit on downloads. To run scripts, you need to know what you're doing.
Now,
curl http://... | sudo sh
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OpenSSL was an example of open source done badly; neither of our communities can claim to be universally perfect. The solution, was to fork and replace OpenSSL with a superior project: LibreSSL. That part of the story, is a success for open source. It shows us recovering quickly and permanently from the worst catastrophe imaginable.
How widely is LibreSSL used, compared to OpenSSL?
% ssh -V
OpenSSH_7.4p1, LibreSSL 2.5.0
> "Microsoft rolled out a patch for the vulnerability last March, but hackers took advantage of the fact that vulnerable targets — particularly hospitals — had yet to update their systems." > "The malware was circulated by email; targets were sent an encrypted, compressed file that, once loaded, allowed the ransomware to infiltrate its targets." It sounds like the basic (?) security practices recommended by professio…
The problem with windows is that crap can not be upgraded without stopping workflow and rebooting.
With linux distros you can upgrade packages in a background (I think that's because you can upgrade the file being executed in linux, while in windows you can't, but I'm not sure) without even rebooting after upgrade. You can even patch your kernel without reboot.
It windows you have to see an upgrade screen for an hour without an opportunity to do something useful, and after that you have to reboot. That sucks.
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> Well this justifies MS's decision for forced updates in Win10. Not that I like it, just saying. Unfortunately, I think the active hours period cannot be set to more than twelve hours, which is less than the time required for some surgical interventions. I can almost imagine it: OK everyone, ten-minute break while Windows installs its updates, this guy who's been on life support for the last ten hours can wait a lit…
Surgeries are scheduled in advance except for the most urgent procedures; most surgeons and surgical nurses don't work on weekends. Surgeon workstations can absolutely be restarted once per month to install the monthly roll-up. The article mentions patient records servers and receptionist computers being affected by the ransomware. Not life support equipment.
I was replying to the part about forcing updates. I didn't know about the group policy setting (rightfully pointed out by sp332); without it, you don't wait a month, you wait at most 12 hours :-).
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> Well this justifies MS's decision for forced updates in Win10. Not that I like it, just saying. Unfortunately, I think the active hours period cannot be set to more than twelve hours, which is less than the time required for some surgical interventions. I can almost imagine it: OK everyone, ten-minute break while Windows installs its updates, this guy who's been on life support for the last ten hours can wait a lit…
Win10 Pro is more flexible, although you might have to drop down to Group Policy to do it. http://pureinfotech.com/defer-windows-10-upgrades-updates/ At the very least, the workstations can be pointed to internal WSUS servers which control the rollouts. I'm guessing that's how most of the currently-vulnerable computers stayed vulnerable until now.
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This 100x. I know it's extremely easy to Monday morning quarterback hospital IT but it's not as simple as people think. There's legal and, far more importantly, medical implications to updating software at a hospital. Oh you think it's ridiculous we use i.e. 7 in compatibility mode? It's because our mission critical emr only works in that (well it really works in everything but it's certified in 7) and if we use anyt…
It's fine to certify devices for certain software, but a device must either be free to maintain and secure or it's not connected to a network. If someone has a computer hooked to an MRI machine and to the hospital network, and it runs outdated/insecure software then someone made a mistake somewhere.
If you want a system to reach 100% it can't rely on not making mistakes. If all operating systems are supposed to be updated, then this has to be enforced as part of the software. The software e.g. shouldn't accept traffic unless it's up to date.
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This 100x. I know it's extremely easy to Monday morning quarterback hospital IT but it's not as simple as people think. There's legal and, far more importantly, medical implications to updating software at a hospital. Oh you think it's ridiculous we use i.e. 7 in compatibility mode? It's because our mission critical emr only works in that (well it really works in everything but it's certified in 7) and if we use anyt…
Oh you think it's ridiculous we use i.e. 7 in compatibility mode? It's certainly ridiculous if you don't keep it utterly sandboxed and limited to only required use. Also ridiculous is anyone falling for - or being allowed to fall for - a mail based phishing attack anywhere in the organisation.
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Oh you think it's ridiculous we use i.e. 7 in compatibility mode? It's certainly ridiculous if you don't keep it utterly sandboxed and limited to only required use. Also ridiculous is anyone falling for - or being allowed to fall for - a mail based phishing attack anywhere in the organisation.
Oh come on. They are doctors and nurses, not programmers.