The WannaCry ransomware outbreak that stated yesterday is troubling
in several ways.
There Internet is a wonderful thing. It has the changed the world in some many
wonderful ways. One of the keys to the
success of the Internet, is trust. We do
business with people we never meet, we buy products from companies across the
globe located in places we’ve never been, and we stay in other peoples’ homes
(and let strangers stay in ours) simply based on a digital image. That trust (and the Internet as a whole) is a
fragile thing. Resiliency was not bot
built into the technologies we use and human emotions can only take so
much. The trust and faith we have and
need will wear away as more and more bad things happen.
Certainly, the evil thugs who launched the malware should be
despised by all. Unfortunately, it is not easy to find them and bring them to
justice. What is even more troubling is
the behavior of the US government. What “spying”
and “intelligence” is worth the destruction that took place yesterday and
continues to wreak havoc? The NSA should
immediately disclose any vulnerabilities it discovers to manufacturers unless
we are engaged in an active war. At this
point the US government has no active declarations of war (and the War on
Terror is as poor excuse to jeopardize every computer in the world) so it is
time to totally revamp the Vulnerabilities Equity Process. We need to protect all people against real
cyber threats that occur every day rather than fighting some ephemeral threat
that may or may not be stopped by leaving millions of computers to vulnerability
to exploits.
This is our wake-up call!
For a good technical explanation of how to deal with this, head to the Varonis blog for information on
securing systems with DatAlert.
hear, hear!
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