Microsoft blames the NSA for the massive ransomware attack. ”It’s like they would steal your Tomahawk missiles”
Microsoft is accusing governments worldwide of being the moral culprits for the ransomware attack that affected 200,000 computers in 150 countries due to the fact that secret services prefer using the vulnerabilities they find as “cyber weapons” and that they do not transmit the information on them to the companies so that they are fixed.
Brad Smith, Microsoft president’s and chief legal officer, said on Sunday that the Friday attack should be a wake-up call. He compared the situation to the US government having its Tomahawk missiles stolen. “We need governments to consider the damage to civilians that comes from hoarding these vulnerabilities and the use of these exploits,” Smith stated.
“An equivalent scenario with conventional weapons would be the US military having some of its Tomahawk missiles stolen,” Smith further added.
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The massive ransomware attack on Friday is based on vulnerabilities in Windows operating systems and by using a software thought to be stolen from the servers at the National Security Agency (NSA). The exploit is called ”Eternal Blue” and was stolen by hackers in the Shadow Brokers group and posted on the Internet in April 2017.
The WannaCry attack blocks computers and asks users for money in order to unlock the devices. This type of attack is called ”ransomware”. Microsoft advises users and companies to update their software as often as possible. Microsoft fixed the security gap in April, but users on computers with old operating systems did not update. Due to the seriousness of the issue, Microsoft provided patches even on operating systems out of use, such as Windows XP, Windows 8 and Windows Server 2003.
The software giant also came up with the idea of a ”Digital Geneva Convention”.
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