Microsoft is a company falling under US laws and thus cannot resist demands by the US giovenrment to build backdoors into the software that can be used by US services to gain access to said systems - may it be for business espionage, political spionage, crime fighting or preparing an act of cyberwarfare via the public and private sector. Evertyhing is possible. The NSA has confirmed officially that it is its policy to gain the ability to access any existing comoputer system in the world,. no matter hwere and no matter by whom it is owned and used, and for what. US companies are prohibited by US laws to make knownj to the poublic that the government may have approached them and ordered them to assist in surveillance or infiltration of comnpouters and networks in the Us and internatiuonally. The legal threats for violating this law and breaking the silence, start with 5 years in prison. This means whenever some CEO of Apple or Microsoft proudly explains to the mikes that his company refused to cooperate with the giovenrment, this staement you muist rate as "worth nothing", because if he would tell something else, and it is true, he/she would be in serious troubles already. Such statements thus are meaningless.

The biggest security risk in all this thus is having Microsoft software (or Google or Apple) running on your hardware, no matter whether you are private, official, business, public sector and service or whatever.

Again: the biggest problem, the biggest security problem here is Microsoft and using Microsoft software - of any kind. The advise is to not use software and service and IT structures of ANY US company, or any international company having offices in the US territories.

Robbins got what I am pointing at. But the naivety of all you others is breathtaking. Its the year 2017 - have you all stopped living 15 years ago already, have you frozen your look on the world and things back then...??? The digital world is a warzone, and the war is hot. And organised crime is one of the smaller worries you should be concerned about. States and their services and secret policies and laws are far more dangerous.

Stockmarket insiders since years say that they take it for granted that stockmarket'S IT structures get attacked and used for manipulation since long, not so much for stelaing money, but for hurting certain hostile nations or hostile parties, actors, companies. This can and I am certain is beign done on behalf of stabilizing the dysfunctional internatiponbal money order and ecponoimic order, too. You can destabulise hostile natiosn by attacking it s social seucrity system when damaging them by stockmarket manipulation. You can manipulate powergrids and energy consummation levels to inbcrease the costs a nation has to pay for prodividng energy, you can unsettle the poublic by manipoulating it, the economic framework in which it lives, the costs the private man has to pay for everyday needs of life. You can give your own companies advanatges by telliung them info on what the companies on other coutnries are up to in negotiations and stratgeic polanning. And so forth. You can bring down traffic systems, delay information distribution for suzpporting of preparing other hostile action asnd to derlay the target naiton'S reaction. You can erode public trust and chnage the general climate in a nation ba attacking healthcare systenms. And so on and on and on. The possibilities are endless.

Becasue the big thing is: if all and evertyhing is digital, then all and evertyhing is available as a taregt from everywhere int rhe world and for anyone in the world. If oyu have your money in a safe in your flat, somebody may break into your house and try to steal it. But if you are forced to have it on your bankign account as digital currency, then you are available not just for thieves in your local vicitnity, but for ever yhacker ion the whole damn globe. Everybody becomes a target for everbody else, from anywhere and for just any purpose. You can even be turned into a wepaon to damage others, woith9out your knowledge, or with you knopwing and just not being able to prevent it.

That is why I am against this totally naive optimism and wanted opportunistic laissez-faire attitude regarding unlimited, undiscriminatory digitalization. The way it is done now and gets propagated by interest businesses, is not cool. It simply is stupid, and ignorrant. Tinfoil hat conspiration theories have nothing to do with it. Do not call me paranoid when you have jumped out of the window in 10th floor becasue you saw your friend grinning and doing it right before you, and then hear me yelling you better should try to get a hold before impacting on the ground. That is no conspiration theory and no paranoia - that is sound advice against the odds.

As mentioned in this thread Microsoft has released some updates to their older version of windows from WIN7 or was it WIN8 down to WIN XP.

Some expert said on TV that they expect millions and millions of operating system who is upholding important systems like our electricity,water and other things very vulnerable and we have only seen top of the iceberg we can expect an huge increase when we hit Monday morning.

Later I heard that Renault had been hit by this ransomware and even German Rail(DB) had this ransomware, they can't send information their station about when or where a train arrives or goes and so on.

I'm waiting for the first news about some electrical supply company have gone down due to this ransomware and that 10000 or more people is without electricity.

Markus

Markus

Occam's Razor! Yours for the low, low price of $10.69!:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/wit...are-2017-05-13


https://i.makeagif.com/media/6-18-2015/F30FgK.gif





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But this particular Occam's Razor dulls quickly as the malware mutates to avoid and the malware automatically updates itself without your knowledge or consent (a tactic duly adopted by Microsoft, by the way). Then it's back to the races, in progress.....

The real Occam's Razor is absolutely free and is called Linux. The majority of web servers, probably including the one that hosts Subsim, are now Linux because Linux really is that superior to Microsoft products.

As Microsoft Windows continues to degenerate and devolve from an operating system which serves its customers to a piece of malware which serves primarily to serve advertising to paying customers and harvest their personal information for database marketing purposes, you will eventually be forced to move to Linux. Why not start learning about it and using it now, while you have a choice?

It looks like it has gone politics in this Ransomware-gate

https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/15/1...ion-wannacrypt

Will not speculate about reaction from the world leaders, if they find evidence that NK is behind this

Markus

It seems the attack was and is abusing a weakness not in XP, but W7 and higher. I took the opportunity to - manually - install my first Windows update since two years on my Windows game-launching machine. :D

Meanwhile it got reported that the latest nVidia drivers have several kernel-level vulnerabilities. :haha:

Digital infrastructure is safe. We need cashless society. We need digital biometric data pools. We need all our vital stuff and codes on our smartphones. We need digitalization everywhere, and on all levels where it so far has worked well without it. Because we can trust it. Digital infrastructure is safe. And it becomes the safer the more experts guard and protect it. :har:

We may need a Butlerian Jihad. LINK :hmmm: :yep:

Murphy's law - give it long enough time, and just anythign that can happen, will happen.

Lemme guess, kb4012212x64, I did too.... manually : )

Trying to catch-up on what's new abut this ongoing ransomware story

Earlier in a Danis radio program called Aflytter=wiretapped it was said that Microsoft already in February had patches to XP and up against this Wannacry.

I don't know if this is true-if it is true it makes one wonder.

Markus

http://www.infoworld.com/article/319...d-malware.html

Well there you go..

Isn't it quite amusing how while west is talking all the time about Russian cyber it is NSA and CIA who are leaking cyber weapons all over the place?

Not quite right: the NSA and the CIA are not "leaking cyber weapons all over the place". The cyber weapons weapons were stolen (possibly by, oh, say, someone like the FSB? :03: :D) from the NSA and CIA and released by "hacktivists"...



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There's a possibility that even more malware is infecting peoples computers.
https://www.onmsft.com/news/new-repo...rtual-currency

I thought theft is forbidden...?

And aren't the NSA's and CIA's cyber vaults said to be "safe"? I mean its all holy digital - praised might be the divinity of this term - so it must be soooper-doooper-secure!

Yep.

Temporarily all quiet on the front. I doubt the silence will last.

I like in all this that Linux market shares have not risen. Indeed I read soemwhere a short whole ago that they have dropped a little bit, from 1.8 to 1.7% or something like that. That means it will remain to be unattractive for hackers to attack. If it would climb to lets say 10% or more, this would chnage, and then it goes the Android's way which also once was claimed to be secure, but is no more.

Popularity is a curse. Lets stop recommendign Linux.

The current problem with Linux is the OS is not all that user friendly and by that , I mean for the average, casual user, Linux is not as 'plug and play' as they would like. What made MS and Apple OS popular early on and, more recently, Android, is the ease of use and 'relateability'; Linux just requires a bit too much tech knowledge for the vast majority of users who just want to turn it on, point, click and go without too much muss or fuss of having to deal with compatibility issues (drivers, software, etc.); Linux isn't a bad OS, its just a bit too 'high maintenance'...

And, yes, the 'immunity' of Linux to hack attacks is largely due to Linux representing such a small portion of the market; if Linux ever got to, say, 25%+ of the market, it will attract the hackers...




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