VOTE Who is the big winner in the Wannacry Ransomware attack?

[PeterTheGrape]

North Korea has been blamed publicly.
But anybody can imitate North Korea's technology and make it look like they are guilty.

Ripple is basically a digital government currency. It has some mysterious extremely deep pocket behind it and is very friendly to regulators.

Government regulators who do not want to see fiat go, who want to keep their comfortable jobs, are gloating over the attack. It's silk road 2.0. The virus seems to have been programmed to geo avoid certain countries, which may be a remnant of the initial code, or a quirk of the attacker.

Other financial sectors have a history of using dirty tricks to gain a small benefit. This attack would have been low cost, low risk, high benefit to some.

Worth noting too that the virus did not spread through easily noticeable vectors. The attack itself seems to have been done by somebody who would have had to be familiar with the pre release i.e., pre hack, use of the code. In other words it was not something anybody could just copy and release. It seems to have relied on Windows vulnerabilities that are not useful to routine hackers.

[kirch]

I guess govt is behind this attacks and many more to come in future
It just want to bring some kind of regulation/ban on bitcoin and other cryptocurrency ..citing the attacks and ransom

[Quartx]

No one actually wins in this attack, it shows that bitcoin can indeed be anonymous, but it also shows how hard it is for newbies to actually pay using bitcoins, and also establish bitcoin with a bad reputation as a hacker currency.

[ImHash]

At the end everyone with evil intentions are the losers parties, if you wrong someone it doesn't matter how, what matters is your intend, I seriously can't understand politics but the so called attack wasn't that big to pay this much attention to it.

[PeterTheGrape]

At the end everyone with evil intentions are the losers parties, if you wrong someone it doesn't matter how, what matters is your intend, I seriously can't understand politics but the so called attack wasn't that big to pay this much attention to it.

If you run for president I will vote for you.

[Idrisu]

No one actually wins in this attack, it shows that bitcoin can indeed be anonymous, but it also shows how hard it is for newbies to actually pay using bitcoins, and also establish bitcoin with a bad reputation as a hacker currency.

Many people said is a win win situation for bitcoin and others crypto currencies like ripple but to me this is a sign for government to start clams down bitcoin and crypto currencies in general. "indeed bitcoin is anonymous" and because of its nature of anonymous many hackers will now going to hack more and this will create fear in the heart of bitcoin heavy investment.

[PeterTheGrape]

No one actually wins in this attack, it shows that bitcoin can indeed be anonymous, but it also shows how hard it is for newbies to actually pay using bitcoins, and also establish bitcoin with a bad reputation as a hacker currency.

Many people said is a win win situation for bitcoin and others crypto currencies like ripple but to me this is a sign for government to start clams down bitcoin and crypto currencies in general. "indeed bitcoin is anonymous" and because of its nature of anonymous many hackers will now going to hack more and this will create fear in the heart of bitcoin heavy investment.

What's missing are opinions from individuals who are not interested in somebody deciding which currency they should use.

The assumption of corporate/government currencies like Ripple is that people should be made to use a currency with an 'acceptable' amount of traceability, which is fine. Most people want to have some proof of payments they made etc.

But there are lots of currencies that can solve the problem without govt help, and even bitcoin could evolve in a way that limits its usefulness to extort money.

The problem, for most people in the world, is not anonymity, it is government control of their money. Most of the dictators in history would not have existed if they did not control money, and as long as a group of dangerous people can hide in government and control currency 'for the benefit of whomever', governments will not move forward.

 

[zend7]

What has Ripple got to do with this. Ripple is not even a real cryptocurrency. No one is the big winner here, in fact the originators of the attack will be the losers in the end as people will become more aware after this attack and will back up their files a lot more regularly. If they create a new Ransomware it will not be effective as very very few people will accept to pay the ransom, the others will gladly format their PC and reinstall their OS and then transfer the backup files. In the end no one is the winner.

[Kemarit]

What has Ripple got to do with this. Ripple is not even a real cryptocurrency. No one is the big winner here, in fact the originators of the attack will be the losers in the end as people will become more aware after this attack and will back up their files a lot more regularly. If they create a new Ransomware it will not be effective as very very few people will accept to pay the ransom, the others will gladly format their PC and reinstall their OS and then transfer the backup files. In the end no one is the winner.

Yeah I agree with you. Ripple what? In the end the hackers will lose in this. People now are going to safeguard their crypto's so that they will not be a victim of another kind of malware like Wannacry. Of course, they will evolve, to find new exploits, but people now will learn how to backup their files everyday or even make their wallet safe. And as far as media attention is concern, I think its a good exposure to bitcoin technology. People will search what bitcoin is and why the hackers want it as mode of payment.

[Proton2233]

The extortionists received a ransom of more than $ 12,000. They are already winners. To reserve a database is of little use, because no one knows how long after penetration of the virus begins to work. He may sit inside your backups. Extortionists demanded payment in bitcoins and this means that once again touted the cryptocurrency. The whole world is talking not only about the virus, but the bitcoin is good.

[zend7]

The extortionists received a ransom of more than $ 12,000. They are already winners. To reserve a database is of little use, because no one knows how long after penetration of the virus begins to work. He may sit inside your backups. Extortionists demanded payment in bitcoins and this means that once again touted the cryptocurrency. The whole world is talking not only about the virus, but the bitcoin is good.

Wherever and whatever the hackers do and evolve, people are not stupid to put the backups of their files and their wallets in the same OS they do their daily work. Me and everyone else will keep our backup of wallets in an external USB or HDD and will use as needed,(normally I don't need this as I have proactive protection of Avira Full Internet Security Suite but just in case). This way if you backup your files daily no hacker or ransomware can harm you. Maximum of harm they can do to you is a few hours of work, to reinstall OS and transfer files.

[criptix]

Where can you vote that your 16 year old brother did the attack?

[B1tUnl0ck3r]

not me !

Where can you vote that your 16 year old brother did the attack?

Why not sister? .

[veleten]

well it was the largest scale cyber attack in the history -or so they called it
and when there is a ransom in bitcoins it definitely puts bitcoins in the limelights,even if in the negative
but as some people say there is no such a thing as BAD publicity
maybe it is one of the steps that helps the adoption,who knows:you hear about it on the news,then you  look up bitcoin on the web and get hooked ")
so all in all I think bitcoin is the big winner

[PeterTheGrape]

Where can you vote that your 16 year old brother did the attack?

Added since it is a possibility.

[Sonystra]

The extortionists received a ransom of more than $ 12,000. They are already winners. To reserve a database is of little use, because no one knows how long after penetration of the virus begins to work. He may sit inside your backups. Extortionists demanded payment in bitcoins and this means that once again touted the cryptocurrency. The whole world is talking not only about the virus, but the bitcoin is good.

Wherever and whatever the hackers do and evolve, people are not stupid to put the backups of their files and their wallets in the same OS they do their daily work. Me and everyone else will keep our backup of wallets in an external USB or HDD and will use as needed,(normally I don't need this as I have proactive protection of Avira Full Internet Security Suite but just in case). This way if you backup your files daily no hacker or ransomware can harm you. Maximum of harm they can do to you is a few hours of work, to reinstall OS and transfer files.

I am sure that people will not every day to spend several hours to transfer files. Everything will remain as it is. I don't really trust antivirus programs. They spread the viruses to stimulate the purchase of antivirus. Kaspersky lab is working for the FSB and who knows what viruses it spreads.

[LTU_btc]

It's hard to tell, because we don't know who hides under these attacks. I don't believe this attack was made by North Korea. I don't think that their hackers is such powerful to make attack which affected people in over 100 countries.
My personal conspiracy theory:  maybe attack was made by group of people who are working in big IT corporation and they found security breach and found way how to benefit from it. So, I think these who made this attack is only winners in this situation.

[PeterTheGrape]

It's hard to tell, because we don't know who hides under these attacks. I don't believe this attack was made by North Korea. I don't think that their hackers is such powerful to make attack which affected people in over 100 countries.
My personal conspiracy theory:  maybe attack was made by group of people who are working in big IT corporation and they found security breach and found way how to benefit from it. So, I think these who made this attack is only winners in this situation.

Not necessarily "people who are working in big IT corporation", but clearly not some little hacker trying to get bitcoin.

The mechanism that caused the malware to spread outside the networks it was in is not known by a lot of people yet.

Most likely it involves a flaw built into Windows and meant exclusively for the use of government agencies. There is additional public information that points to this, though it is not discussed much. The hacker was most likely an employee of some government who was aware of how to trigger these hidden Windows modules, though he/she could well have been from any govt as the existence of this is somewhat known and is described in a roundabout way on public sites.

Then a person should ask "What was the goal of making such a false front attack"?

Today we see a much bigger attack based on the same malware, used to "mine Monero". The timing, and the fact that the new malware is less hostile to the public, suggests a possible motive.

 

[Lieldoryn]

It seems to me that under the pretext of extortion hidden much more global purpose. We think that the goal of hackers is money, but I think it's training for war. Imagine what would happen if the enemy at one point denied all of the computers. I think for this virus are entire laboratory, rather than individual hackers.

[Mometaskers]

I chose the 16 year-old. Wait, that don't sound right. 

But seriously, though it's possible this is another front of cyber warfare, I still think it's likely some hacker or a group of hacker out to make some quick bucks. Just recently someone was holding Pirates of the Caribbean sequel hostage. Never underestimate personal motivation.

The way I understood what happened, the US gov't found some vulnerability in Windows but did not report it to Microsoft since they probably found a use for it (hence the stinging denouncement from the company). A hacker group later released some sort of leak. Is this one of those?