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WHAT’S THE STORY?
1. HORRIBLE to report that the ceasefire between Israeli forces and Hamas has collapsed within a few hours. Israel claims Hamas shot rockets and 27 were then killed by Israel shelling.
2. A TWO-YEAR-OLD boy was killed when he was hit by a van in Tipperary town late yesterday evening. That’s 24 pedestrians killed on our roads so far this year.
3. CUSTOMER of two major Irish banks are not impressed this morning. Bank of Ireland customers who didn’t have their salaries paid into their accounts as expected this morning are being told they will get paid today, but maybe not all at once. Ulster Bank was having issues with its mobile banking service.
4. THERE has never been a better day to slow the hell down. Speeding drivers face extra penalty points from today.
5. THERE were over 100 incidents of racism in Ireland reported to the European Network Against Racism in the first three months of this year alone. Young black African men were the most frequent targets of such racist abuse.
6. LEITRIM Council has passed an emergency motion to stop a mining firm from drilling in Belcoo, Co Fermanagh – protestors claim this is the first step to full-on fracking in the area.
Microsoft must be the only company in the world that can launch flawed deeply broken products and have no commercial repercussions.
Bill gates should be made spend some of his billions on creating products that are not completely flawed and full of holes.
@brian boru: There is no such thing as a piece of software that is 100% secure beacuse tomorrow the tech/software will be invented to make it only 99% secure and then 98% etc. Microsoft patched this when it was leaked the problem is the NSA allowed it to be leaked and showed it off to all the hackers out there, its the NSA’s fault this hack was not raised to MS before it got leaked as well as the people in charge of all the places that got hit who only understand why spending money on upgrades is necessary after the fact
@Ian McNally: 100% agree. NSA/US government caused this. Apple have been proven right regarding creating an iPhone hack tool. If you create it, it will get into criminal hands
@brian boru: Really? Are there no flaws in other operating systems?
XP was released 16 years ago and all of the current operating systems are patched.
And they’re not flawed deeply. They’re being hacked.
If you’re able to write software without bugs your daily rate must be astronomical. Congratulations.
@brian boru: this is a software system that is many years old. Microsoft made a huge deal of the fact that they would no longer support it years ago. In fact, they delivered a security update in March this year to protect against this attack vector. If people are too stupid to update their ancient software when Microsoft rushes out a patch for something they no longer support. You got to figure it is their problem.
@brian boru:
Written by someone who clearly had no idea of what they are talking about
@brian boru: It isn’t their problem that someone allowed 3rd party software to run on an unsupported system and infect connected networks.
Scary, if this effects the social welfare payments we could see mass panic and riots in the country.
@Dave Hogan: There will be army on the streets if any TD / conSultans / bankers payments would be affected…
My Nespresso machine wouldn’t pour my morning Americano earlier. My first reaction aptly was I wanna cry. Could this malware be inside my nespresso machine?
@John O’shea: Is it plugged in?
Anyone still using Windows XP deserves help. A migration to linux would leave them
a) without exposure to all the Windows-specific viruses and trojans
b) with support for all of their peripherals
c) with an up to date and supported OS where you do not sign a licence agreement that gives MS full access to all of your data
d) with an OS which runs updates in less than a minute, in the background without stress
e) which is free and can be installed and reinstalled as many times as you like with no licence issues
With regards to b) … I migrated from XP to Win7 when it became available and found that my printer and scanner no longer were supported with MS drivers.
A switch to LinuxMint left me with fully working printer+scanner and no need to buy an antivirus suite – plus it comes with a firewall and even provides an antivirus suite to allow you to scan attachments from windows users to clean them before sending them on to other windows users.
@The Sagacious Man: Which one of 100+ linuxes you recommend to move to ??
@The Sagacious Man: Very helpful. Thanks
@The Sagacious Man: how well does it support all the esoteric bits of equipment in use in specialist areas like medicine?
Linux Mint is the best at the moment for anyone migrating from Windoze. All my home and studio machines run it and I only use Windoze for professional proprietary software. If anyone is just using a computer for browsing or office etc there is no need for MS hell.
@Patrick J. O’Rourke: Do people still use Winsoze & Linsux when referring to their OS? I thought most people had matured from that now.
@The Sagacious Man: unfortunately for most users, windows is the only stop. All others pale in comparison as user interface and support for connecting all of today’s devices just simply isn’t there. Windows or Mac … rest like Linux are for the more tech minded … most people haven’t the time.
They have internet on computers now ?
@Stephen: one day, I hope. Happy iStone user.
Article says this affects XP.
It’s not just XP.
7, 8 10 and the server OSes are included.
Make sure your machine is patched up to date.
@Michael O’Neill: yes that was a flaw in the article because it returned again later to discussing Windows XP. From the horses mouth, Microsoft, the exploit exists on every version of Windows out there, desktop and server up to and including Windows 10 and Server 2016.
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/security/ms17-010.aspx
What an utter pile of nonsense. Do you wants some facts?
A 22-year-old cybersecurity analyst accidentally shut down vast numbers of attacks by the devastating WannaCry ransomware by buying a domain name hidden in the program:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/05/13/a-british-researcher-says-he-found-a-kill-switch-for-the-malware-crippling-computers-worldwide/
Microsoft releases security patch for Windows Server 2003, Windows XP and Windows 8 to patch WannaCrypt exploit:
https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/msrc/2017/05/12/customer-guidance-for-wannacrypt-attacks/
@cortisola: There are new versions of the attack that don’t have this kill switch. Don’t rely on that.
@Michael O’Neill: Surely there are still holes in all known systems and you cant be 100% sure anything but we are talking about WannaCry 2 attack here.
@cortisola: The only nonsense are your “facts” That’s yesterday’s news. Try to keep up
The patch is irrelevant, completely and utterly so. All the exploit allowed was for an already infected machine to push the trojan onto another exploitable machine on the network.
It still happened because some idiot user clicked a link/attachment in an email without thinking and essentially invited the trojan onto the network.
If people stopped clicking on everything they see, this wouldn’t happen very often.
I had to write a document to send to users today clearly showing them what not to click and why.
You can have the most up to date, fully patched system there is but all it takes is one person to run an executable hiding in a zip file, run a macro in an office document or lick a link they shouldn’t and it’s all over.
Anti Virus is useful but it’s all about user education.
@Reuben Gray: yes, good advice (although the patch works so inhibit contamination) but someone in a large enough network will predictably click on links or attachments even when obviously highly suspect.
PWC has done anonymous testing sending in dubious and unauthorised links and attachments. 70% of users won’t ever access. The same 30% will always access. They just can’t help it.
@Reuben Gray: I wish. I do the user education in my place. All of the users have been trained and get frequent awareness updates.
When I do my phishing tests I still get up to 10% of users that’ll fall for them. I’ve yet to meet a HR dept that’ll allow me to sanction users that just won’t learn.
Patching means it won’t spread. The idiot that clicks the links will just be out of commission for a few hours while IT take their PC away for a rebuild.
@Reuben Gray: You can’t legislate for stupidity and user error but can you build up your projections. The quality of social engineering is getting better and very realistic.
@Michael O’Neill: One of the places I support had the same user cryptolock the entire network twice in as many weeks. Since that site pays ad-hoc, it was very expensive to sort out each time.
Any company using Windows xp deserve it. Upgrade your systems to an up to date and supported OS. Idiots
There should be an onus on Microsoft to support any of the operating systems they sold to the public. Withdrawing support for Windows Vista, XP etc was just a marketing ploy to sell their latest systems. It would happen then sooner rather than later that malware would be planted by hackers on obsolete unsupported operating systems. The perpetrators are in fact highlighting the problem and maybe inadvertently doing a favour for the future. By abandoning supporting the older systems Microsoft abandoned the people who had purchased the systems. The support should have been open ended.
@Micheal S. O’ Ceilleachair: So… Micorsoft (or Apple, or whoever) would need to employ teams of developers in perpetuity to work on obsolete OSes with ever-decreasing numbers of users? Unsustainable, and never going to happen. It’s not like the end of support for XP wasn’t flagged, literally years in advance. It got support for 12 years and that support ran out over 3 years ago…
@Whitsun Healy-RaeNua: there was the economic downturn also and businesses weren’t too keen to invest either. Getting applications upgraded to support new OS is a problem not likely to disappear in the near future.
@Micheal S. O’ Ceilleachair: MS support is usually for 5 years plus another 5 extended support. They will offer support but at a cost.
For Windows 10 Pro, security patch MS17-010 works.
This has reinforced my attention to ensure that updates are applied.
Next is what? Bio weapon attack?
Microsoft will be delighted to hear how many authentic XP licencees were out there….
30,000 Chinese institutions, using who knows how many instances, due to upgrade to Windows 10 sometime soon.
Scientists used a mobile connected to a laptop to put a virus in a car so that its steering and breaks wouldn’t work.
With everything connected to a program then nothing is safe not even nuclear power plants?
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150421/23581430744/gm-says-that-while-you-may-own-your-car-it-owns-software-it-thanks-to-copyright.shtml
https://www.wired.com/2015/04/dmca-ownership-john-deere/?mbid=social_fb_onsiteshare
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