I got home, put on BBC News and there was some dope being interviewed about a “cyber-attack on the NHS”, blithering on about their M3 network and how secure it is. I turned over to Sky, and there was someone from Alienvault talking sense, but not detail. Followed by the chair of the Security and Intelligence Committee, Dominic Grieve, blustering on about how seriously the government took cyber-security but admitting he didn’t know anything about technology, in case it wasn’t obvious. I have never met anyone in parliament who does (see previous rants).
So what’s actually happening? It’s not an attack on the NHS. It’s a bunch of criminals taking advantage of a bug in Microsoft’s server software. Almost certainly MS17-010. An attack based on this exploit was used by NSA in America (Equation Group) until someone snaffled it and leaked it (allegedly Shadow Brokers). It’s been used in a family of ransomware called WannaCrypt, and it’s being used to extort money all over the place. I see no reason to believe the NHS has been targeted specifically. It’s targeting everyone vulnerable, all over the world. Poorer countries where they are running more old software, or running bootleg version that don’t receive updates, are worst hit.
So why is the news full of it being the NHS, and only the NHS? One reason is that Microsoft issued a patch for MS17-010 a good while back. And the NHS didn’t apply it. Why? Because they’re still using Windows XP and Microsoft didn’t issue the patch for Windows XP. Simple.
A lot (repeat A LOT) of companies use older Microsoft systems because (a) they’ve bought them, why should they pay again; and (b) Microsoft abandoned backward compatibility with Windows 7, so a lot of legacy software (dating back to the 1980’s) won’t run any more. Upgrading isn’t so simple.
There’s a lot of money (from Crapita Illogica (CGI), Atos and G4S – amongst others) in flogging dodgy Microsoft-based IT to government projects. Microsoft Servers are considered Job Security for people who can only understand how to use a wizard, but know it’ll break down regularly and they’ll be called upon to reinstall it.
No one who knows how computers work would ever use Microsoft servers except as a last resort.
Update 13-May-2017
Guess what? Microsoft has now released a patch for older versions of their server software (ie. Server 2003 and Windows XP). That was jolly quick; it’s like they had it already but didn’t release it to punish those who refused to “upgrade”.