Trident on XP

[diafol]

Over here in the UK, we've just had a massive cyber attack on our health system - doctors and hospitals. Although, as health is a devolved area here in Wales and we have our own systems, no attacks yet (still waiting!). On the back of this, it seems that systems were using Windows XP - not that I'm in the know - perhaps HG could help out here - but it is suggested that it is not the most secure OS. Wait for it - our nuclear deterrent, Trident, is also run on XP. I read this article, but my interest / technical ability lies elsewhere:

https://www.thecanary.co/2017/05/13/the-uk-governments-comments-on-the-nhs-hack-reveal-a-terrifying-truth-about-trident/

Is a nuclear system running on XP a problem?

[happygeek]

The XP thing is a massive red herring. As is the idea that the NHS was targeted. The main reason for the rapid rate of infection appears to have been the use of the EternalBlue vulnerability to spread the WannaCrypt0r payload. This was one of the NSA developed vulnerabilities that got leaked in the Shadow Brokers hack. It meant that any systems not patched by the March 14th Microsoft 4013389 security update for SMB Server 1.0 would be susceptible to passing the infection from LAN to WAN (remote code execution by way of a specific message sent to Microsoft Server Message Block 1.0 (SMBv1) server.

XP usage remains a major concern of course, just not really something that contributed massively to the spread of this particular ransomware attack.

[diafol]

I suspected the Canary skimmed over the particulars and was sensationaling by joining up different distant nodes on the map. Thanks for elucidating HG - not that I understand how any of this works :)