WannaCry or better learn from it?

The malware WannaCry became quite well known, especially because it manifested itself on the displays of the German federal railroad and it even blocked most of the hospital infrastructure in the UK. Find some discussion on Bruce Schneier’s Blog… You find a a href=“https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/05/did_north_korea_1.html“>more elaborate article on his blog as well. Read Bruce’s blog article, he knows more about security than I do… 🙂

We might have observed, that this attack was targeting MS-Windows computers. The argument, that this is just because MS-Windows computers are more common, is no longer true. But the argument, that the MS-Windows developers just did a lousy job does not hold either. It was true 10, 15, 20, 25 years ago. We have seen it. But today I would assume, that they have improved and are doing a good job.

There is an argument, to favor open source over closed source for security reasons. If a software is open source, it is much more difficult to incorporate malicious features like backdoors into it or to leave security holes open by mistake, because the source code can be analyzed and fixed by anybody who has access to the internet and the capabilities. This is no guarantee, but it is a good thing.

The other argument is more like a question. How close are US companies to US government agencies? Do they do each other little favors? We do not know.

In any way, the people who did this malware attack are criminals and I regret that this has caused so much damage. Fortunately criminals are relatively rare. So the frequency of encountering them in daily life is usually not so high, unless we live in especially crime infested areas. But the internet connects us with criminals all over the world and allows them to damage us. So it might be ok in a good neighborhood not to lock the door or not to lock the bicycle. It gives a good feeling to trust our neighbors. But in the internet, the bad guys are there for sure and they will discover our unlocked virtual door. We can rely on that.

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