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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: 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.