Ransomeware hits Windows

I watched the news on TV yesterday, of businesses across the world being hit by "ransomeware". Hospitals in the UK have had to turn away patients.

What they did not say on TV, is just what computer operating systems have been hit. I wondered if it is Windows (again).

Yes, it is:
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/12/nsa-hacking-tools-hospital-ransomware-attacks-wannacryptor-238328

The leaked hacking tool exposed a method of spreading malware across computers in a network using a flaw in Windows. Once a computer is infected with the ransomware, if that machine has not been patched, the infection can jump to other machines.

We should not be complacent with Linux though. I intend to keep thinking about tightrning up the security in Quirky.

For now, there is a good argument for taking the precaution of running SeaMonkey and Firefox as the "spot" user.

Tags: linux