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Malware, described in leaked NSA documents, cripples computers worldwide

BillRM said:
Nonsense as there are firms that fairly cheaply will do constant online backups in real time with older versions of backups available so you would just need to go back to a point where the backups are not encrypted.

Then have offline backups at least daily on top of that.

It not a big problem if you take a few precautions.
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It is a matter of numbers. In this thread we are talking about some pretty big numbers. For instance, it is easy for a hospital to have 2 or 3 PB of data. That is not a number that can be done online or cheap.

Application like mail and databases need to be up all day. A hospital is not going to shut those down for the time it takes to do an offline backup. Online backups of mail servers and database servers requires software that, again, does not come cheap.

But having said that... The high cost of backing up that data is cheaper than the cost of losing it.

Given the percentage of businesses the shut down after losing data, even the smallest business is crazy not to do backups.
 
BillRM said:
Nonsense as there are firms that fairly cheaply will do constant online backups in real time with older versions of backups available so you would just need to go back to a point where the backups are not encrypted.

Then have offline backups at least daily on top of that.

It not a big problem if you take a few precautions.
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For the amount of data the NHS has online storage is simply impossible, they would have to store everything manually which is both expensive, time consuming, and requires a lot of manpower. With the NHS you are into the realm of big data where normal data storage solutions are simply not feasible. You could also never have a full backup.
 
BillRM said:
Nonsense as there are firms that fairly cheaply will do constant online backups in real time with older versions of backups available so you would just need to go back to a point where the backups are not encrypted.Then have offline backups at least daily on top of that.It not a big problem if you take a few precautions.
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No, a large networked system with hundreds or thousands of end users, networked applications, real time software systems, etc., is never as simple as "just restore a backup". I wish it were, and I probably yelled at someone in IT at some point "why cant' you just restore it and be done with it!" Then they probably explained it to me and I dozed off ;)

But something the size of a hospital, I think it's long hours, maybe days, to fully recover, and they would still lose data. Not to mention the real time 24/7 needs of a hospital. That's IF they had on call IT support or their own IT department (NHS did not sadly), and backups (as you point out).

Backups *should* be a given, and I hate seeing "we thought we were running backups", but if they didn't have their own IT department, that's always a real possibility that someone didn't continue them or do them correctly. Managing a large organization is so much harder than the personal attention we give to our own small systems.
 
I think it's time for governments to hack the bit coin system and ruin it by spoofing values here and there, and demanding ramsom, and then doing it again.
 
natsb said:
It is a matter of numbers. In this thread we are talking about some pretty big numbers. For instance, it is easy for a hospital to have 2 or 3 PB of data. That is not a number that can be done online or cheap.

Application like mail and databases need to be up all day. A hospital is not going to shut those down for the time it takes to do an offline backup. Online backups of mail servers and database servers requires software that, again, does not come cheap.

But having said that... The high cost of backing up that data is cheaper than the cost of losing it.

Given the percentage of businesses the shut down after losing data, even the smallest business is crazy not to do backups.
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Where do you get the figure of 2 or 3 pb worth of new information per day from a hospital?

Next why would you need to shut down a network to take a snapshot of that network for offline or online for that matter, backup purposes?
 
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BillRM said:
Where do you get the figure of 2 or 3 pb worth of new information per day from a hospital?

Next why would you need to shut down a network to take a snapshot of that network for backup purposes?
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Never mentioned new information per day. Where did you read that?

Never said anything about shutting down a network either. I did mention that a hospital will not shut down mail or database servers to do an offline backup.

Mail and database applications live in memory and cache, and cannot be rebuilt without quiesced log files. Getting that data cannot be accomplished with a snapshot, although a snapshot does play a small part in the entire process. Like I mentioned, the software needed to do an online backup of mail and database servers is not simple or cheap.

The real point in this thread is that it needs to be done. Ransomware is nothing more than an annoyance when there is a backup handy.
 
BillRM said:
The idiots should had have full backups in a number of offline locations so they could be back up an running within hours.

Hell my home computers have such backups and all internet facing programs such as browsers are in a sandbox beside and I am not running a hospitals!!!!
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I'm not a computer expert. I'll wait on the opinions of those who are. But you should remember that no matter how carefully you personally are, you too are dependent on computer systems.
 
chuckiechan said:
I think it's time for governments to hack the bit coin system and ruin it by spoofing values here and there, and demanding ramsom, and then doing it again.
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chuckiechan said:
I think it's time for governments to hack the bit coin system and ruin it by spoofing values here and there, and demanding ramsom, and then doing it again.
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I would suggest you read the open literature on bitcoins and the bitcoin chains to understand that hacking the system is as next to impossible as anything can be even for a nation state actor.
 
zimmer said:
Trains in Germany, hospitals in the UK, throughout Russia...

If only they'd take down the IRS... then they'd win a ton of support.
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Wait until they compromise our electrical security grid. The snowflakes will all protest, wring their hands and be afraid because it will get very dark and they have no guns! Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
 
I remember back-in-the-day when some kid in the Philippines managed to shut down every Bank of America ATM in Europe and also the government of South Korea for a couple of days. We are all so scarily dependent now on computer technology.
 
BillRM said:
I would suggest you read the open literature on bitcoins and the bitcoin chains to understand that hacking the system is as next to impossible as anything can be even for a nation state actor.
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Nothing is hack proof if it goes through the internet.
 
chuckiechan said:
Nothing is hack proof if it goes through the internet.
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Nonsense...............That what the technology of encrypting is for.

Hell I could send you a PGP sign message by way of the internet and not every nation state on earth could read it less alone change one character in it or forge another message that claim it was from me to you without you knowing it was not from me.

There are limits to the ability to hack no matter what resources the hacker command.
 
TurtleDude said:
While I am not a big fan of the death penalty, I would not lose sleep if the people who unleashed this nonsense were executed when caught.
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I'm in favor of the death penalty for several crimes.

Once dead, that person cannot repeat the crime!

I believe it to be a great deterrent as well.
 
Lord of Planar said:
I'm in favor of the death penalty for several crimes.

Once dead, that person cannot repeat the crime!

I believe it to be a great deterrent as well.
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Strange as it is my understanding that the murder rate is no less and is in some cases higher in US states with the death penalty then the states without the death penalty.
 
BillRM said:
The idiots should had have full backups in a number of offline locations so they could be back up an running within hours.

Hell my home computers have such backups and all internet facing programs such as browsers are in a sandbox beside and I am not running a hospitals!!!!
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This is blocking access to their computers. How does backing it up help that?
 
holbritter said:
This is blocking access to their computers. How does backing it up help that?
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Blocking may be how some reporter express the problem however it is encrypting all the files on a computer so they are meaningless until you pay to have them unencrypt and if you have backups before the files had been encrypted then you just replaced the encrypt files with the backup files.
 
BillRM said:
Strange as it is my understanding that the murder rate is no less and is in some cases higher in US states with the death penalty then the states without the death penalty.
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So...

Is the death penalty implemented because of the high murder rates, or are the murder rates a result of the law?

It could be the flip of what you believe.
 
BillRM said:
Blocking may be how some reporter express the problem however it is encrypting all the files on a computer so they are meaningless until you pay to have them unencrypt and if you have backups before the files had been encrypted then you just replaced the encrypt files with the backup files.
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I simply clone my drive from time to time. Get corrupted, but pop in the fresh clone.
 
Note Microsoft had just released the patch to block this randomware attack from no longer supported OSs such as XP and Visti.

There is a hack to the register in any case that will allow XP systems to keep getting security updates and I myself just had just received 11 such updates only yesterday.

It would seems that XP that are use in point of sale systems will be updated for two more years at this point in time, so it simple to Id Your system as a point of sale system with the register hack.
 
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