Another global ransomware cyber-attack

Probably russians, i reckon Kaspersky became wealthy by spreading viruses & then selling his antivirus software to combat them. Makes perfect sense & it's nothing to do with politics, just a good ole scam.

I daresay McAfee & the others do similar things, i noticed that my free AVG stopped working & they urged me to buy the full version, which i did & it screwed my computer big time.
Took me ages to get back to normal, and a letter of complaint to Grisoft didn't even get answered.

As long as the money keeps pouring in........

originally posted by: ForteanOrg
a reply to: Grambler

You wrote: "Let me speak for the media, Hillary supporters, dem politicians and hollywood when I firmly place the blame on..."

.. and that was neither informative, funny, called for - and it is exactly what causes this forum to be in its current deplorable state. Cut it out.

Now, back to the topic. No, it was almost certainly not the NSA that introduced backdoors - it was dear old Microsoft themselves, incidentally. However, the NSA has indeed found and used these backdoors and "incidentally" forgot to report these to the public.

I find people like you deplorable. Those that seek to be the moral guidepost and arbiter of all that can be said.

Those that complain voraciously about the status of ATS, and have a false sense of moral superiority. I find nothing you said at the top of your post to be funny, informative, or in any other way contributing to the topic of this thread.

On topic:

Yeah, it looks like the NSA tools allowed this to happen.

Did Wikileaks not realease some date about nsa hacking utilties earlier. If true that could be a very serious issue to look into. a reply to: knowledgehunter0986

originally posted by: knowledgehunter0986
a reply to: ForteanOrg

I'm not an expert, so I don't understand the difficulties involved, but I wouldn't be surprised they are only testing the waters.

A global cyber attack I would assume is quite a feat, so thinking it can potentially get much worse isn't too far-fetched is it?

There are various reasons to hack systems. If you do this to gather information, you make dang sure that the subject does not even notice she's being hacked. Iif you're going to do the Internet version of an EMP, you do not advert your attempts using big banners that yell "pay up now or else!". That is only done to earn money.

Ransomware is a real problem, but it is not a political problem. It's a computer security problem.

a reply to: ForteanOrg

FALSE
blogs.seattletimes.com...

Microsoft gave the NSA back-door access to its email service Outlook.com before it even launched last year.

fortune.com...

Apple CEO Tim Cook said his company will fight a court order, granted to the FBI on Tuesday, that would compel the manufacturer to build what it calls a "master key" for the data held on iPhones.

www.theguardian.com...

BI director James Comey wants a US government-mandated backdoor into your iPhone and your Google account. But Comey doesn’t want to call his proposed privacy invasion a backdoor. He doesn’t understand how it would work. And he expects everyone who has been horrified by the NSA’s mass surveillance to just sit back, weaken their personal security and trust that the government will never abuse it.

www.washingtonsblog.com...

A careless mistake by Microsoft programmers has revealed that special access codes prepared by the US National Security Agency have been secretly built into Windows. The NSA access system is built into every version of the Windows operating system now in use, except early releases of Windows 95 (and its predecessors).

Microsoft's "incidental" backdoor dealings weren't them mistakenly including a backdoor... their incidental was that they had an oopsie moment in programming which didn't mask the NSA's access keys enough to keep them shielded from curious power users.

This type of bullcrap: www.wired.com... is solely on the shoulders of our meddlesome, criminal, arrogant alphabet agencies.

a reply to: ForteanOrg

I don't think cyber attacks and politics are mutually exclusive and imo would be naive to think an attack can't be used for a political agenda.

It's too early to tell but all the details so far point to political.

I'm no expert on what's happening but Snowden seems to be posting more about it on twitter I'll grab some screen shot and hopefully someone can help us understand

a reply to: Grambler

Here you go Fortean!

LOL. I respectively ask you to be polite and you start off with an ad-hom...

You are officially TRIGGERED

Care to lecture him on how this isn't about politics, but its about ransomware?

You made it political with your political baiting/trolling, did you already forget your first post in this thread? All that I typed was in reference to your post. Can't take the heat get out the kitchen. It was hilarious yet to be expected how you barged in here with your typical "IT WAS THE RUSSIANS" sarcastic post that we see on a daily basis, thankfully originality is not what you seek it seems.

1. Russia was attacked also.

If this were the Ruskies, the smartest thing to do would be to get attacked as well to divert attention and make people focus elsewhere.

I already explained that I don't think it's Russia but your political baiting made me curious as to what your reasoning was. Regrettably you returned with more childish name calling, not surprising to say the least judging by your posting history.

All good bro, I'm a jerk too.

Look up fan boi in dictionary - your pic will be right beside it.

As for your reasons 2, 3 and 4...I actually kind of agree with SOME of your reasoning but it would take a thread or two for me to allow you the time to grasp the complexity of the whole situation.

originally posted by: GramblerThose that complain voraciously about the status of ATS, and have a false sense of moral superiority.

At least half of that sentence is correct

On topic:

Yeah, it looks like the NSA tools allowed this to happen.

Not so sure. Actually, many software engineers introduce "backdoors" in their code for testing purposes, with the full intent to remove them in the production version. But sometimes such backdoors remain in the code. Intelligence agencies are aware of this and try to find such backdoors. Most backdoors give you access to the core of the system, and often with elevated rights. This enables you to do with the system whatever you want. So, you can actually do stuff like monitoring the screen, gather keypresses (including your passwords), sniff disks and networks, take screenshots etc. - and all without the subject even realising this. Secret services SHOULD of course report this to - say - Microsoft, but well, then MS would patch the systems and in effect kill their intelligence..

Indeed, everything can be used to serve a political agenda. However, RANSOMWARE is just that: a bunch of folks encrypting your files in order to obtain money.

originally posted by: ForteanOrg

originally posted by: Grambler
Let me speak for the media, Hillary supporters, dem politicians and hollywood when I firmly place the blame on...

Well I be danged. Exactly ONE post away from the OP and you're already doing some unwanted, unneccessary and totally not called for political trolling. Sheez, man, this was not about American politics, but about RANSOMWARE.

N/m

originally posted by: Mikehawk
a reply to: Grambler

Here you go Fortean!

LOL. I respectively ask you to be polite and you start off with an ad-hom...

You are officially TRIGGERED

Care to lecture him on how this isn't about politics, but its about ransomware?

You made it political with your political baiting/trolling, did you already forget your first post in this thread? All that I typed was in reference to your post. Can't take the heat get out the kitchen. It was hilarious yet to be expected how you barged in here with your typical "IT WAS THE RUSSIANS" sarcastic post that we see on a daily basis, thankfully originality is not what you seek it seems.

1. Russia was attacked also.

If this were the Ruskies, the smartest thing to do would be to get attacked as well to divert attention and make people focus elsewhere.

I already explained that I don't think it's Russia but your political baiting made me curious as to what your reasoning was. Regrettably you returned with more childish name calling, not surprising to say the least judging by your posting history.

All good bro, I'm a jerk too.

Look up fan boi in dictionary - your pic will be right beside it.

As for your reasons 2, 3 and 4...I actually kind of agree with SOME of your reasoning but it would take a thread or two for me to allow you the time to grasp the complexity of the whole situation.

I didn't post an ad ho against you, nor was I rude. I was merely pointing out to Fortean, who said that this wasn't political, that there are clear political implications. Sorry if you somehow felt that was an attack on you.

As far as you calling me a fan boi and what have, thats cool, doesn't bother me in the least bit.

a reply to: ForteanOrg

How are you so sure about that? You have inside knowledge? Did you read all the links and tweets provided? It definitely points to something much deeper and even political.

Alright guys , its spreading by SMBv1 just like before.
If you have the KB4012212 you are good to go.

If you don't , here.( W7 & Server 2008 R2 only)

www.catalog.update.microsoft.com...

Buck

a reply to: ThePeaceMaker

But if we have nothing to hide we still have nothing to fear right?

a reply to: flatbush71

When I installed that patch my system glitched and I had to reregister my copy of Windows 7.
Is that common?

It may have reset the registration.
It didn't happen to me when I installed sometime back.
If it took the S/N and registered you should be good to go.

Everyone does it so it's okay.

a reply to: Kali74

What exactly are you alluding to?

...and they will keep coming. The worst thing anyone could have done was to pay 1m dollars. Now, anyone and everyone will see that as the ticket to a million bucks.

It's like a cat. You feed it once and it'll bring all the other cats to your door for food.

Crazy stuff...

I see a day coming when these ransomware attacks will be so common that people will start actually becoming ready with backups and reimages on a monthly basis.