Of note is how WannaCry appears to have intentionally avoided the Home vers. of Windows. https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...of-all-wannacry-victims-were-using-windows-7/
What do they mean XP wasn't to blame? The only people to blame were the administrators that had 2 months to patch their systems. If you're trying to imply that using XP is safe and fine, I should remind you of the amount of XP systems infected at the UK NHS. I should also remind you that Microsoft has never released a patch for a dead O.S. until now. The idea that this wasn't a problem on XP is curious. It would imply that Microsoft released a patch for something inconsequential, this whole article reeks. I'm not denying that the overwhelming amount of PCs infected were Windows 7. But I don't see how you could draw any kind of conclusions of blame by knowing this statistic. We already know the blame lies on those that didn't patch their systems with an available patch.
As far as the NHS attack goes, it very well be that some endpoints did have Win 7 installed. WannaCry infected that PC which in turn infected the rest of its network which were predominately running Win XP.
Here's the Kaspersky twitter feed: https://twitter.com/craiu/status/865562842149392384 . Appears Win 10 infections were from testers or manual means. I assume this means that it was possible to infect unpatched Win 10 devices by WannaCry but not by the method it was delivered in the actual attack.
It wasn't to blame in this specific malware spread. It apparently was not targeted by exploit implementation.
There's a June election here in the UK, I think there has been a lot of hype concerning this NHS XP fiasco.
Thanks for posting itman - As usual XP wasn't the big culprit as was purported. Something fishy going on. Not saying people using XP shouldn't take extra measures to protect themselves but the outcry against XP is unwarranted.
If Kaspersky statistics hold true, appears in any case that the orgs with a lot of XP boxes that got infected were in any case sloppy and negligent in patching their non-XP boxes; notably the ones running Win 7. And, there really is no excuse for that. On the other hand until a definitive opinion on how WannaCry was able to enter the network is determined, everything is just speculation.
This is one typical example why on Win10 updates are forced, because bunch of noobs are disregarding updating their OS.
In WannaCry's case, it wasn't a "bunch of noobs" but system admins who didn't apply the patches since overwhelmingly the targets were commercial concerns running server or Pro+ versions of Windows. And the primary reason Windows updates are not immediately applied to corp. networks is their past and well documented history of busting things. This in turn results in implementation delays since all updates have to be thoroughly tested prior to being rolled out in mass to all network clients. So again, blame the real culprit, Microsoft, in these increasing security fiascos for not performing adequate quality control on their updates.
"been defanged by a clever British researcher." I read yesterday the domain that researcher registered was being targeted by a denial of service attack. If I remember right, that is what stopped the attack because the infected computers were not able to reach that domain till he registered it. Now the attack should be back up and running since nobody can reach that domain now.
In my recent experience with the NHS (two years of intensive physiotherapy) all of the computers I used in therapy were running XP, but they weren't connected to the Internet. So I think most of their online software probably was Win x64, which seemed to be the most vulnerable.
Not sure if this has been posted but here is the site of the kid that stopped the attack. http://www.malwaretech.com/
That was my assumption also. Plus, I assume this was the case for other large commercial concerns using XP.
Like a lot people, I automatically assumed the infection was from using outdated, unpatched and unsupported software with XP being the prime suspect. I now believe Win 7x64 was the main OS targeted.
However, other sources have quoted Win XP WannaCry infections. This one notably about the NHS: http://news.softpedia.com/news/nhs-...500-of-them-infected-by-wannacry-515865.shtml
Some probably are but the individual computers I used weren't. They don't need to be anyway. After severe bleeding on the brain I had to learn to talk and walk again. A lot of therapy I had was essentially playing video games connected to a biofeedback sensor to encourage my damaged brain to develop new neural connections to relearn how to use my undamaged limbs.
