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Fearing Shadow Brokers Leak, NSA Reported Critical Flaw to Microsoft

posted by on Sunday May 21 2017, @08:07PM   Printer-friendly
from the better-late-than-never dept.

Fnord666 writes:

After learning that one of its most prized hacking tools was stolen by a mysterious group calling itself the Shadow Brokers, National Security Agency officials warned Microsoft of the critical Windows vulnerability the tool exploited, according to a report published Tuesday by The Washington Post. The private disclosure led to a patch that was issued in March.

Those same NSA officials, according to Tuesday's report, failed to communicate the severity of the vulnerability to the outside world. A month after Microsoft released the patch, the Shadow Brokers published the attack code, code-named EternalBlue, that exploited the critical Windows vulnerability. A month after that, attackers used a modified version of EternalBlue to infect computers around the world with malware that blocked access to data. Within hours of the outbreak of the ransomware worm dubbed WCry, infected hospitals turned away patients; banks, telecommunications companies, and government agencies shut down computers.

"NSA identified a risk and communicated it to Microsoft, who put out an immediate patch," Mike McNerney, a former Pentagon cybersecurity official and a fellow at the Truman National Security Project, told The Washington Post. The problem, he said, is that no senior official took the step of shouting to the world: "This one is very serious, and we need to protect ourselves."

Source: ArsTechnica

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday May 22 2017, @02:55AM (2 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday May 22 2017, @02:55AM (#513286) Journal
    Jack Bauer was going to get the password out of the terrorist using the five dollar pliers, but the terrorist choked down a cyanide pill hidden in a tooth. Fortunately, five dollar pliers work on US Senators too, and Jack is able to pass the privacy-destroying laws he needs to save Manhattan.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @04:09AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @04:09AM (#513309)

    And they're rebooting that shit, pretty sure the protagonist is a woman this time. Gotta get the diversity in there, can't let a silly thing like feminism stop the police state.

    • (Score: 2) by DECbot on Monday May 22 2017, @04:22PM

      by DECbot (832) on Monday May 22 2017, @04:22PM (#513565) Journal

      Technically , in the US, a male is a minority*. So you should still be able to cast a man. LGBTBBQLOLBRBWTF man if you're still trying to fill the diversity quota.

      *You'll have first trust Wikipedia, then second trust the 2012 CIA World Factbook, and third add up the numbers yourself.
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_States#Ages [wikipedia.org]

      --
      cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base