IT Professionals, Guilty

Just like HOTY 98, Windows 98 is evergreen.

Twoz a good yeeeear boi, why would weez be fur changin’?

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Ransomware is back and brought some friends. Probably buoyed by some crowd in South Korea paid $1m to unlock some files last week. Christ.

All of these exploits are on decades old software that cheap companies refuse to upgrade. Reap what you sow.
The Wikileaks published NSA/CIA hacks could end up being good news in the long term but it’ll get worse before it gets better.

One practical thing to come out of this. If you have any personal documents/pictures of value on just one computer right now, for the love of god back them up. You don’t want to be hit by this kind of ransomware with little Billy’s baby pictures locked up.

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The guy that died being driven to Cork because you can only have a heart problem 9-5, Monday to Friday in Waterford.

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From my own research, there seems to be a lot of misinformation / lazy reporting around the latest “petya” outbreak. Yesterdays attack was very different to the wannacry attack in that while it used the same exploits once it was within a company, it’s original method of entry was by hacking the legitimate update server of a Ukrainian Software company, MEDoc. They produced an accounting package used by a lot of Ukrainian business. The hackers infected their latest software update, so when the customers auto-updated yesterday it introduced the virus into their network.

Even though it’s being described as a world wide attack it would seem the majority of the companies affected had offices in the Ukraine. This was more likely a cyber attack on Ukrainian infrastructure, than an attempt to extort money from home users.

Also in other news a Colonel in the Ukrainian Cyber Intelligence service was killed in a car bomb yesterday morning.

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That is a clever approach to distribution.
Consider how many apps are widespread on iphone and android devices and how often they drive updates.
One hack to an update server for the TripAdvisor app would impact multiple millions of phone and tablet units.
I dont know that there is commercial value in that for the originator but that does not have to be the goal in doing this.

That also combined with the fact that traditional Anti-Virus software is pretty much a lame duck these days. There are newer, behaviour based anti-virus packages but very few companies would be running these as they are fairly expensive (compared to traditional AV).

What AV is on an android or IOS device?

None built in.

That is rarely highlighted

The way Android and iOs are built make them far less susceptible to the type of virus attacks which target Windows machines. To date the majority of the attacks on mobile devices have come via the method outlined above, either deliberately dodgy apps, or legitimate apps which get hacked.

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I think today is Ukranian National Day as well.

I knew there’d be an excuse for a couple of beers tonight

Have you ever wandered over the border for look? Not Russian style now, but in a tourist capacity.

Never bothered. Lviv is a bit like Krakow I believe. The roads are shite there.

For the love of…

Moronic reporting. Any UK military IT system is built on bespoke hardware and software. They don’t buy servers or operating systems off the shelf.

I can’t see the military using a Windows based operating system.

Not a hope. Even servers and networking gear are built from the chip up.

Go/No go decision on a 19 month project I have been working to be made by E.O.B today and I made the rookie mistake of wearing a light blue short to work today.

I look like Jose Antonio Camacho at the 2002 World Cup

[quote=“Big_Mick_McCarthy, post:759, topic:16006, full:true”] …and I made the rookie mistake of wearing a light blue short to work today.
[/quote]

It’s vital to have a well aerated ballsack when these big decisions need to be made. How’s the rollback plan looking?

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