Posted on 06/28/2017 9:51:49 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Tuesdays massive ransomware outbreak was, in fact, something much worse
Payload delivered in mass attack destroys data, with no hope of recovery.
DAN GOODIN - 6/29/2017, 5:30 AM
Tuesday's massive outbreak of malware that shut down computers around the world has been almost universally blamed on ransomware, which by definition seeks to make money by unlocking data held hostage only if victims pay a hefty fee. Now, some researchers are drawing an even bleaker assessmentthat the malware was a wiper with the objective of permanently destroying data.
Initially, researchers said the malware was a new version of the Petya ransomware that first struck in early 2016. Later, researchers said it was a new, never-before-seen ransomware package that mimicked some of Petya's behaviors. With more time to analyze the malware, researchers on Wednesday are highlighting some curious behavior for a piece of malware that was nearly perfect in almost all other respects: its code is so aggressive that it's impossible for victims to recover their data.
In other words, the researchers said, the payload delivered in Tuesday's outbreak wasn't ransomware at all. Instead, its true objective was to permanently wipe as many hard drives as possible on infected networks, in much the way the Shamoon disk wiper left a wake of destruction in Saudi Arabia. Some researchers have said Shamoon is likely the work of developers sponsored by an as-yet unidentified country. Researchers analyzing Tuesday's malwarealternatively dubbed PetyaWrap, NotPetya, and ExPetrare speculating the ransom note left behind in Tuesday's attack was, in fact, a hoax intended to capitalize on media interest sparked by last month's massive WCry outbreak.
(Excerpt) Read more at arstechnica.com ...
Now referred to as Hillaryware.
That included a C.Itoh dot matrix printer, the size of a small car and a 1200 baud modem and 12" Color Monitor. Now a 64GB thumb drive is $16.00 with 2 day free delivery. Sheesh. Still give me more storage or give me death! - Too much trouble to wade through all the duplicates ... ;-)
I agree about Seagate. But I have never had a failure in many years using the higher-end WD drives. They are a little more expensive but well worth the outlay.
Interesting plot line. FYI, we cooperated with the mafia during World War II to keep out German spies and to get information regarding Italy prior to a couple of the landings there.
With regard to those guys, at least it is quite simple to understand their motivations, and to deal with them accordingly.
Friend of mine works for MSFT cybersecurity. It’s an NSA tool and the patch to fix it was released 5 months ago. The folks hit decided not to patch.
This was avoidable, twice.
There is no cloud, it is just somebody else's computer.
Smart move
And people who release malware like this should simply be hunted down and killed.
Don’t like extra-legal punishment, but courts would never punish these people as they deserve.
Sometimes it is the only way to move information quickly and conveniently.
For example, I was a professional photographer specializing in sports. There were be times when I was shooting for a college on the other side of the country. I used cloud storage so that the Sports Information guys at the college could log onto a remote sever and download their photos as soon as they were uploaded.
The last time I shot a basketall tournament, I was shooting on the floor, editing in the camera, transmitting the image to a PC onsite, which was uploading to the cloud every time a new image hit the folder.
There were literally photos on their twitter page within a minute of the play.
It was scary “real time” stuff. And if I was more adept, I should have just sent the highlight photos to the twitter feed and skip the middle parts.
So, that is an example of how the cloud has enhanced my life. There are million of other examples.
I had four Drobo four drive network drives. I started out with 1TB drives. The entire thing was up to 16 bays of 4 TB drives.
I was backing up stuff at least twice.
What I did not do was a good job of indexing individual files. Finding an event is a task and a half now.
I upgraded from Seagate to WD drives because the SGs were burning up. I never lost data, but I hated tossing those drives away.
Anyone who does this should become prime target #1 for the entire planet, and hunted down and summarily executed.
It will teach a lesson for the others.
Anyone who SPOTS a vulnerability and reports it, should get a huge reward.
This completely changes the motivation to find and act on them.
Yeah, could be...
Anyone who bases their business on “the cloud” deserves everything that happens to them.
(and I am a software engineer FOR A LIVING)
There are valid and fantastic uses for “the cloud” but relying on it to store your information without physical LOCAL backup is just plain dumb.
for later
To solve your indexing problem, look for a free program named Cathy. It will build an index of all of your drives that is searchable. Since the index is on your hard drive, you can index a removable drive, remove it and still have it included in the index. I have about 20 or so off line drives that I have in my index.
You cannot destroy data if it has been backed up. If you don’t back it up, you don’t care about it.
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