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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.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Wednesday June 28 2017, @03:29PM (5 children)
Your argument is bullshit, and you're a liar.
still easier to use than any Linux distribution.
Companies do not want to train people. Period. They definitely do not want to train idiots ... to work with some strange operating system where the buttons are located in slightly different places.
These are lies, as proven by the existence of Windows 8/10 Metro.
You can't have it both ways: either companies had to retrain all their employees to use Metro when it came out, or they don't need to retrain them for Linux.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @04:01PM (1 child)
I think it's unfair to call the GP a lier. I fully agree that training is roughly equivalent between upgrading to WIN8/10 and linux. But companies do not. It would also likely mean more changes in the network infrastructure to switch from win->linux to win->win. Admittedly, it would almost certainly be cheaper in the long run to switch to linux. Being able to simplifying the licensing alone would a big advantage. But Western business culture is currently structured to be short-sighted and stupid both for the companies themselves and even more so for our society. Short sigted and stuped generally is going to mean Windows.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday June 28 2017, @06:30PM
I think it's unfair to call the GP a lier.
I don't think so. I've been hearing that argument for years, but when the Metro UI came out and they kept repeating it, it was obvious that it was just lies. Metro is far more different from what came before (the old NT/XP/7 UI) than any of the typical Linux UIs, even the crappy Gnome3.
I fully agree that training is roughly equivalent between upgrading to WIN8/10 and linux. But companies do not.
Then they're either liars or stupid. If someone disagrees that the Earth is round, I don't need to polite in my disagreement with that person for being so incredibly stupid, I feel perfectly justified in treating him uncivilly. Denying plain reality should never be met with anything but pure scorn and contempt. It's either done because the person is incredibly stupid, or a liar trying to push an agenda.
I'm not even addressing the other factors of Linux vs. Windows, just the training argument I keep seeing over and over. Other factors are actually debatable: software availability, for instance, is a valid argument. The software "ecosystem" Windows offers (Outlook etc.) for corporate use is another valid argument. The training argument for the UI simply is not. It's bullshit. It was a poor argument even back in the XP days (how much trouble did office workers have when going from MS-DOS to Win3.x or Win95?), but it completely ceased to be a valid argument the moment the Metro UI was released in Win8. Why aren't companies spending tons of money "retraining" all their office workers for Win8/10? Because that "training" argument is total bullshit, that's why. As I said before, LIES.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @04:48PM
Except for those organisations still running ancient software. Because YOLO! Who cares about software updates or security patches...right? At least until they get hacked. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Wednesday June 28 2017, @06:54PM (1 child)
According to one Web analytics company, Windows 7 accounts for 49% of Web page views:
-- https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10&qpcustomd=0 [netmarketshare.com]
According to another, it accounted for 48% at the end of last year:
-- http://www.pagestart.com/win10marketshare011217.html [pagestart.com]
I'm guessing that corporate PCs may be under-represented in those figures, because I assume that home users spend a greater proportion of their time browsing the Web. My impression is that, outside Microsoft, there isn't much enthusiasm for Windows 8 or 10, and that companies, more than individuals, have tended to remain with Windows 7. I would assume that most of them would rather not have radical changes to Windows. I would expect them to "jump ship" when there's something stable, easy to use and maintain, that runs their specialised software. For some it already exists.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday June 28 2017, @10:06PM
...have tended to remain with Windows 7. I would assume that most of them would rather not have radical changes to Windows.
What users want is completely irrelevant. They're going to use Windows 10 with the Metro UI whether they like it or not, it's just a question of when. MS doesn't sell 7 any more, and they're ending support for it in a couple of years. They're even making it so 7 doesn't run on the latest CPUs. Sure, a bunch of companies have held back their Win10 upgrades, but they did that with XP too, and eventually moved to 7, and the same will happen with 10.
I would expect them to "jump ship" when there's something stable, easy to use and maintain, that runs their specialised software.
The specialized software is always going to run on Windows, so they're going to stick with Windows (10), regardless of how shitty it is. And it's not just the specialized software, it's the rest of the ecosystem for corporate computing: Outlook/Exchange, Sharepoint, MS Office, etc. In short, moving away from Windows requires too much short-term pain, and companies simply aren't willing to do that. Any upper manager who tries to push such a project is assuming a huge amount of risk, whereas a manager just going along with the MS treadmill can feel secure in his corporate position, no matter how badly the new MS software performs or how many ransomware attacks it suffers: "No one ever got fired for buying Microsoft". People have been predicting the demise of MS for over 15 years now and it hasn't happened, and in fact MS is more profitable than ever.