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

[PeterTheGrape]

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?

Microsoft is way more hacked than that. There are common programs that a lot of people use which cause Windows to download ... etc. The NSA knows that its hacking tools will be public eventually, they may be intrusive but they are not retarded. The tools cannot be used unless you have access to some things that mostly only governments can access, i.e., through Microsoft. The NSA tried to put the blame on Microsoft but Microsoft does as told. Now Microsoft has to pretend it made a mistake that allowed vast vulnerabilities and it makes patches not to fix anything but to give the appearance.

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[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?

Microsoft is way more hacked than that. There are common programs that a lot of people use which cause Windows to download ... etc. The NSA knows that its hacking tools will be public eventually, they may be intrusive but they are not retarded. The tools cannot be used unless you have access to some things that mostly only governments can access, i.e., through Microsoft. The NSA tried to put the blame on Microsoft but Microsoft does as told. Now Microsoft has to pretend it made a mistake that allowed vast vulnerabilities and it makes patches not to fix anything but to give the appearance.

You think this is some sort of inside job then? Maybe a Microsoft employee doing a bit of hacking on the side?

[PeterTheGrape]

...

You think this is some sort of inside job then? Maybe a Microsoft employee doing a bit of hacking on the side?

Microsoft employees probably did not have access to everything needed to use the malware. Possible, not likely.

[veleten]

some say it was an attack on bitcoin,there is a conspiracy theory on reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/6c3n6j/wannacry_ransomware_exposed_as_a_false_flag_to/
if you watch that video,the author is trying to prove that it was a false falg operation to tarnish bitcoin's reputation and try and drive the price down
this was hugely unsuccessful,we are about to hit 2000$ as we speak

[Clement Kaliyar]

some say it was an attack on bitcoin,there is a conspiracy theory on reddit:
if you watch that video,the author is trying to prove that it was a false falg operation to tarnish bitcoin's reputation and try and drive the price down
this was hugely unsuccessful,we are about to hit 2000$ as we speak

If this is really a conspiracy theory then it must come from China  as they are the ones who used to spread FUD news and drag the price down whenever the price was about to rally big time ,but now they are not having that much control over the system and most or all of the exchanges in China disables people withdrawing the coins and so they might have come up with wannacry,who knows. 

[jaberwock]

Bitcoin of course.

See the rise in value. See lots of people talking about it. See lots of people considering investing in Bitcoins.

Bitcoin is the winner, followed by alts

[romero121]

Bitcoin of course.

See the rise in value. See lots of people talking about it. See lots of people considering investing in Bitcoins.

Bitcoin is the winner, followed by alts

Agreed, bitcoin is the true winner. Due to wannacry bitcoin popularity have increased as well have reached lots of unknown users who hear the term bitcoin for the first time. Also the ongoing price increase confirm that bitcoin is the winner.

[Sithara007]

Bitcoin has reached a stage where it no longer needs the negative publicity. In the early stages, any sort of publicity (including the negative type) was good for Bitcoin. But now that is no longer the case.

[freedomno1]

I was wondering if there was really a kid that found 50 BTC during the attack and chose that option ha-ha, with all that considered the wannacry ransom was quite modest considering how many PC's it infected.

It irks me that apparently windows 7 is the most vulnerable yet the easiest to use, I see a MS conspiracy.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/19/15665488/wannacry-windows-7-version-xp-patched-victim-statistics
(Also this data does not account for all the ATM's in china that got locked I believe)

Because of sloppy coding, researchers have found that private system encryption keys can often be recovered from infected machines.
That part was new to me but the joke is that it is due to Sloppy Windows Coding ha-ha thank goodness its Windows lol.
https://github.com/aguinet/wannakey

[joebrook]

In my opinion the attack was initiated by some government agency to test how strong and powerful the virus is, after all what's the use of making a computer virus when you can't even use it.

[veleten]

I was wondering if there was really a kid that found 50 BTC during the attack and chose that option ha-ha, with all that considered the wannacry ransom was quite modest considering how many PC's it infected.

It irks me that apparently windows 7 is the most vulnerable yet the easiest to use, I see a MS conspiracy.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/19/15665488/wannacry-windows-7-version-xp-patched-victim-statistics
(Also this data does not account for all the ATM's in china that got locked I believe)

Because of sloppy coding, researchers have found that private system encryption keys can often be recovered from infected machines.
That part was new to me but the joke is that it is due to Sloppy Windows Coding ha-ha thank goodness its Windows lol.
https://github.com/aguinet/wannakey

it was a particular vulnerability exploited,known to the agencies only
well.I haven't checked the info,but people say that it appeared on wikileaks,hence the "kid" "50 bitcoins" and
this plethora of unprofessionalism surrounding wannacry (this domain cure,no decypher keys sent etc.)
by the way it is not only windows 7 that is prone to the attack,win 7 and older all have this vulnerability

[S3cco]

I don't know who is the big winner, but I can tell you who are the big losers: NSA, Obama, and their strategy of "backdoors".

Leave a backdoor or hide a bug, first or later somebody will find it and use for his own purposes.

[freedomno1]

by the way it is not only windows 7 that is prone to the attack,win 7 and older all have this vulnerability

It was the chart data that was included with the article that was making me question it given the news of China units running XP.
I heard that a lot of XP units crashed before the program executed so it may be plausible just not 98% of all infections plausible like Kapreseky implied.
https://twitter.com/craiu/status/865562842149392384



So based on the chart either Kaspersky is trolling us with these numbers
2. China pirates Windows 7 not Windows XP in 2017
3. The data is erroneous
https://www.hongkongfp.com/2017/05/21/china-home-half-computers-infected-wannacry-ransomware/

This seemed more like the actual

Data from BitSight covering 160,000 internet-connected computers hit by WannaCry shows that Windows 7 accounts for 67 percent of infections, although it represents less than half the global distribution of Windows PC users.
https://www.itnews.com.au/news/windows-7-machines-most-impacted-by-wannacrypt-462553

So long story short I was complaining about the source and that Kapreseky was B/S should have said capable of spreading the virus perhaps not 98% of Total infections.

[Sithara007]

I don't know who is the big winner, but I can tell you who are the big losers: NSA, Obama, and their strategy of "backdoors".

Leave a backdoor or hide a bug, first or later somebody will find it and use for his own purposes.

Anti-virus provider Kaspersky could be one of the big winners. They were among the first to detect the virus. Almost none of the Kasper-protected systems were infected by this ransomware.

[veleten]

I don't know who is the big winner, but I can tell you who are the big losers: NSA, Obama, and their strategy of "backdoors".

Leave a backdoor or hide a bug, first or later somebody will find it and use for his own purposes.

Anti-virus provider Kaspersky could be one of the big winners. They were among the first to detect the virus. Almost none of the Kasper-protected systems were infected by this ransomware.

are you sure? reports were saying "no antivirus was able to stop the virus"
has Kaspersky issued an update to fight this particular threat?
Kaspersky has been targeted by western media as pro-kremlin FSB sponsored company
so this could  make their image better somewhat
p.s. they have a free antivirus version with reduced functionality,wonder if it can stop Wannacry

[Hazir]

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

At this point it is impossible to ban bitcoin, it would be outrageously stupid and wouldn't fix anything.

1. You can't effectively bank bitcoin, you can only hinder its legal presence, it will be just harder to exchange BTC to fiat.
2. If bitcoin won't be used as ransomware payment method something else will take its place, other more anonymous altcoin or something totally different like premium text messages or phone calls.