Hacker News Reader

Comment by rhubarbcustard | Hacker News Reader

What's special about WannaCry that has made this such a widespread thing? I presume there's has been plenty of malware for a while that can propagate itself around a network of unpatched old Windows machines and people have been trying to get users to clicks on emails to infect themselves for years.

So why now? What's so special now?

View on HN

Basically, this is a successful old-fashioned computer worm, operating at a scale we've not seen for more than 10 years. On modern operating systems most attack surfaces that were easy to crack in the past have been locked down at least to the point where it is nearly impossible to find an exploit in a common protocol like this that doesn't require user interaction (hence the popularity of phishing). Apart from that we've just gotten lucky, really. Many of the most catastrophic bugs in recent years (Heartbleed, etc) were never successfully turned into exploits of this nature. Instead they were discovered and fixed quickly by researchers.

This worm targets older Windows versions that are installed (and use the exploited protocol) in a lot of critical infrastructure, and the worm was hoarded by the NSA all packaged up and ready to deploy (because it can propagate through SMB and therefore would be perfect for a future Stuxnet-like operation). So of course some criminals get their hands on it, and hey look it works. It's an absolutely bonkers story.

"older Windows versions"

Win 10 is vulnerable without the patch that came out in march.

Wow, I've heard various rumors about the scope but that is pretty serious.

Any chance you've got a source on that? Most everything I've read said Win10 was protected since March.

Edit: I'm dumb, misread the above comment as saying "Win10 was affected even with the patch in March."

>Win 10 is vulnerable without the patch that came out in march

Microsoft clearly disputes this in their own posts on the subject.

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/msrc/2017/05/12/customer...

"Customers running Windows 10 were not targeted by the attack today."

What's your source?

WannaCry ("the attack") didn't target Windows 10 installations (probably since most Win10 users have updates enabled), but Windows 10 is still vulnerable without the patch.

Again, where is the source? I seriously doubt that the worm author would let go such a profitable target if they can infect Windows 10. According to this: https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share... Windows 10 has almost 4 times users than XP (and supposedly the gap is growing larger)

Just have a look at the XML configuration files for the exploits used. They are on GitHub. Windows 10 was not a target.

The difference would be that Win 10's forced updates mean nearly every Win 10 user is patched. It would be a much less successful target (though still a target > 0).

From your source:

"Customers who are running supported versions of the operating system (Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012, Windows 10, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016) will have received the security update MS17-010 in March. If customers have automatic updates enabled or have installed the update, they are protected. For other customers, we encourage them to install the update as soon as possible."

If you don't have the update, you are not protected, you are vulnerable.

If you or your IT dept is not installing updates, especially security patches, over 2 months after they come out, somethings horribly wrong.

Posting from a throwaway for obvious reasons, but the place where I work still hasn't applied these patches after I warned their IT dept about the NSA vulns a month ago... luckily I'm at least able to apply the patch to my own system manually. If it hits us I'm pretty sure we're screwed on the order of a few thousand systems.

The reality is, this is very common.

Then what, realistically, can be done when nation-state knowledge of vulnerable systems is hoarded for cyber-warfare purposes?

Frankly, there is only one solution I can see anymore:

Laws must be passed to:

* Force the US government to report vulnerabilities to vendors

* Create a regulatory body to monitor the use of vulnerabilities in clandestine operations and ensure that mandatory reporting is upheld

I cannot see anything less working.

Get that through US and EU governments, and you'll likely have the vast majority of vulnerabilities being reported and patched.

Of course this is akin to asking the US and Russia to convert their nuclear stockpile into reactor fuel.

I think you need to read their statement more critically. "Not vulnerable" is not the same as "not targeted".

Actually, the latest news suggests this thing is a hybrid worm/phishing trojan which can use the SMB exploit where that works best (e.g. once it is inside a local network).

It's not "old Windows machines," it's XP to Server 2012. It also isn't clear that it came from e-mails yet. It's widespread, easy to propagate, and is hitting the places most affected by Windows 10's advanced telemetry and hidden update.

> It's not "old Windows machines," it's XP to Server 2012.

This is incorrect or at least misleading.

Any machine still running Windows XP, is by any reasonable definition, an "old Windows machine." Windows XP was first released in 2001, and actively supported with updates for 12 years. Windows XP hasn't been supported with critical security patches for over 3 years.

Windows Server 2012 is under active support until Oct. 10, 2023, and was patched against this vulnerability in MS17-010. See the middle of the page here: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/security/ms17-01... If your Windows Server 2012 machine fell victim to this ransomware, it was for the same reason as those running the newer Windows Server 2016 (also vulnerable to WannaCry): because someone didn't apply security patches in a timely manner.

This ransomware was particularly damaging because of it's unusually wormable nature. (Ring 0, commonly enabled networking protocol, no user interaction required.)

An XP computer is old, Windows 8.1 is one generation back. Both are vulnerable to this exploit. Yes, patches have been available for supported versions, I don't know how that makes anything I said wrong or misleading.

We agree about it being not JUST old Windows versions being affected.

I replied to your comment because the "old" Windows XP having no patch available was significant here, and I read your comment as saying "old" windows versions were not proportionally more responsible for WannaCry's rapid spread.

Windows XP is still the third largest version of Windows by current installed base (after Windows 10 and Windows 7).

The fact that Windows XP remained unpatched was significant, as there is notable overlap between Windows machines that aren't getting new security updates (at least within a month or two of their release) and Windows machines still running Windows XP.

This vulnerability was, in fact, unusually dangerous, relative to other Windows XP vulnerabilities that have come to light in the last 5 years, and the install base of the "older" Windows XP machines made a big difference in the ransomware's ability to spread.

The resources I see don't show XP as third, though I'm sceptical of anything based on user agent. And I can't find anything about how responsible they would be for the spread.

I addressed that it wasn't "old" Windows because there is a crazy belief out there that this only hit XP.

>...and is hitting the places most affected by Windows 10's advanced telemetry and hidden update.

Can you elaborate on this?

Places where uptime is vital were bothered by the 10 rollout and may have altered their patching method after. And places with serious privacy concerns must be wary of Windows updates. Enterprise is supposed to allow everyone to be shut off, but mistakes can be very expensive.

Most vulnerabilities are limited to old releases or new releases, whereas "EternalBlue" affected all Windows versions across the board. The patches are less than two months old, so there was a chance to exploit old machines and newer ones that slow IT might have left vulnerable. This is why someone invested a bit in making the exploit wormable and unleashed it, the potential pool of victims was bigger than usual.

> So why now?

I think it's because it's cool to use the word "cyber" now in the news. It makes news outlets appear edgy and with it. Infact these cyber attacks are nothing new, and have been an ongoing problem for organizations like the NHS, the only difference being there is a remarkable uptick in the scale of the attack. The reason it stands out is because it's a cluster, instead of a slow, trickling problem for the NHS and other organizations.

> What's so special now?

The sophistication and worm capabilities. Were it not for the Shadowbrokers leak, small time malware authors had to use tired old strains of malware to spread. Now they can draw upon the vast arsenal of the Shadowbrokers leak and appear like state actors, which they are not.

If anything, the leaks were a blessing, because now we can mitigate against such attacks. NSA's mantra 'NOBUS' (No-one-but-us) does not apply here.

The thing that scares me most is that while this has been a public facing issue, many of these computers at Telefonica, the NHS, and others, have been silently accesible via the exploit for a while.

Nobody seems to be talking about this, but we can only guess that a lot of stuff has been compromised and still is.

What really worries me is the huge amount of non-patched computers that have not fallen with this specific WannaCry issue and are sitting idly waiting for their glory day.

This time you have to pay money. That perks people up.

Hasn't that been a common thing in bitlocker malware for ages too?

Did they just manage to craft so really persuasive emails this time?

WannaCry is a worm. It does not require people to click on anything in emails to be infected. It scans for vulnerable computers and infects them directly over the network.

Well, this is in fact similar to botnets, but the virality was absolutely explosive compared to other ransomware—you typically need to target people.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com