The World Is Getting Hacked. Why Dont We Do More to Stop It?
'The path to a global outbreak on Friday of a ransom-demanding computer software (“ransomware”) that crippled hospitals in Britain — forcing the rerouting of ambulances, delays in surgeries and the shutdown of diagnostic equipment — started, as it often does, with a defect in software, a bug. This is perhaps the first salvo of a global crisis that has been brewing for decades. Fixing this is possible, but it will be expensive and require a complete overhaul of how technology companies, governments and institutions operate and handle software. The alternative should be unthinkable.
Just this March, Microsoft released a patch to fix vulnerabilities in its operating systems, which run on about 80 percent of desktop computers globally. Shortly after that, a group called “Shadow Brokers” released hacking tools that took advantage of vulnerabilities that had already been fixed in these patches.
It seemed that Shadow Brokers had acquired tools the National Security Agency had used to break into computers. Realizing these tools were stolen, the N.S.A. had warned affected companies like Microsoft and Cisco so they could fix the vulnerabilities. Users were protected if they had applied the patches that were released, but with a catch: If an institution still used an older Microsoft operating system, it did not receive this patch unless it paid for an expensive “custom” support agreement.
The cash-strapped National Health Service in Britain, which provides health care to more than 50 million people, and whose hospitals still use Windows XP widely, was not among those that signed up to purchase the custom support from Microsoft.'>>>
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/opinion/the-world-is-getting-hacked-why-dont-we-do-more-to-stop-it.html?
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