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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday June 28 2017, @11:34AM   Printer-friendly
from the not-just-for-breakfast-anymore dept.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cyber-attack-idUSKBN19I1TD

A ransomware attack hit computers across the world on Tuesday, taking out servers at Russia's biggest oil company, disrupting operations at Ukrainian banks, and shutting down computers at multinational shipping and advertising firms.

Cyber security experts said those behind the attack appeared to have exploited the same type of hacking tool used in the WannaCry ransomware attack that infected hundreds of thousands of computers in May before a British researcher created a kill-switch.

"It's like WannaCry all over again," said Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer with Helsinki-based cyber security firm F-Secure.

He said he expected the outbreak to spread in the Americas as workers turned on vulnerable machines, allowing the virus to attack. "This could hit the U.S.A. pretty bad," he said.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said it was monitoring reports of cyber attacks around the world and coordinating with other countries.

The first reports of organizations being hit emerged from Russia and Ukraine, but the impact quickly spread westwards to computers in Romania, the Netherlands, Norway, and Britain.

Many recent outages/attacks have a pattern and a UK power grid outage is anticipated.

Previous WannaCrypt coverage.


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  • (Score: 2) by stormreaver on Wednesday June 28 2017, @01:22PM

    by stormreaver (5101) on Wednesday June 28 2017, @01:22PM (#532422)

    ...just patch your goddamn Windows machines, and verify [eset.com] you're not vulnerable to EternalBlue.

    And don't forget test for the other tens of thousands of known Windows vulnerabilities while you're at it. And don't forget, Windows' security is uniquely bad among major operating systems; so even if you're fully patched, your Windows installations are orders of magnitude more vulnerable than any other major operating system, and that can't be fixed.

    If you're running Windows, you're already screwed.

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