DailyPost 973
BALITMORE’s UNENDING ORDEAL
Cyber Security became the number one security risk for the US in 2014 and continuous to hold the first position to this day. While the cyber security threat perception has been taking a steep downslide, the governments, IT and Cyber Security companies want us believe to the contrary. The bravado of IT Security companies, their eternally cheating compliance mindset has brought us to this stage. Creating as ignorant a report as the company itself, having jazz publicity videos and lavish conferences with cocktails and worthless networking will take us nowhere.
The recent Baltimore ransomware attack on the 7th of May 2019 is a slap on the face of IT Security establishment of the world in general and US in particular that Eternal Blue is still being used to gain access by an external party and execute remote commands on the target. Ironically, Eternal Blue has been the creation of National Security Agency, which exploits a vulnerability in certain versions of Microsoft XP and Vista systems, released by hacking group The ShadowBrokers in April 2017. Microsoft released the patch in a day but the problems still erupts after two years.
WeLive Security report presents a grim picture; of its extensive use more so on American targets. ”There are currently almost a million machines in the wild using obsolete SMPvI protocol.” This allows for poor security practices and lack of patching and instances of this nature. If we cannot take care of the known vulnerabilities also, in a age where cyber attacks are of fifth generation and cyber defence is of second generation, do we even deserve to have the digital facilities. It happens in America, the land of the Digital Trillions.
The Baltimore resident ordeal doesn’t seem to end, they are struggling to pay water bills, purchase homes as the city government has begun to implement some workarounds like manually processing real estate transactions. The Gmail system, which Google had shutdown has been restored. For the Microsofts, Symantecs, Checkpoints of the world this is another business opportunity while residents / govts struggle.
IF WE CAN BE ATTACKED BY THE KNOWN ETERNAL BLUE, OUR BASIC CYBER SECURITY CAPABILITY IS IN QUESTION.
Sanjay Sahay