Olaf,

You forgot to comment on the real reason for this unending and weekly update for 10 years. These OSs have more holes than Swiss cheese and spying runs wild. Deliberate holes or not they should pay for us to use these tools.

 

But when you say that this product is bad "to spare a few cents on proper development" you are underestimating them. The product is made according to a predetermined purpose.

 

Olaf, read what Phillip Misner, principal security group manager at the Microsoft Security Response Center, wrote:

 

They have made Volkswagen pay a high price for a fraud that looks more like a child's play than Microsoft and the NSA do. Oh yes! I forgot that they do what they do to protect us from terrorists ... That's why they read Mutti Merkel's emails and the strategies of competing companies.

 

I would like to know what the Europol EC3 will do. Will pursue a hacker or those who created the virus and the port?

 

Marilson

Microsoft inc. most definately has been deliberately putting their customers AND third parties at risk with it's "it kinda works - ship it!" business mentality.

They have deliberately sold, and are currently selling un-finished premature software and didn't bother to seriously look at their own code for at least 15 years. Until problems started popping up because others did. Their most recent remote execution exploit was discovered by some guy linked to Google, without even having access to the source code. One would say that Microsoft itself could have reviewed their code years ago already, and didn't.

In fact microsoft maintains a 'telemetry' (basically espionage) system within windows that reports crashes to them when they occur from customer computers, unknown to those customers. the legal aspects of that too, require investigation. It facilitates tracking of customer activity and ip address data/location.

Apperantly they did find time to build in a few 1000 'telemetry points' but not to fix their implementation of a 30 year old IBM network file sharing protocol.

By the time they became (officially) aware of the bug, they refused to halt their sales, did not do a recall on systems and install media in the retail chain, and happily continued to deliberately sell their broken product while they were working on some patch.

Most likely install media (cds/dvds) and systems containing pre-installed broken versions are still for sale in retail stores now.

Then presenting themselves (microsoft) providing a patch for their self-declared 'unsupported' windows xp as being something 'generous' ignoring the fact that their users, which have paid for a working product, have been shipped off with a broken product, endangering them for 15 years.

Note that they never even mentioned the words 'REFUND' or 'RECALL' - asking the customer to apply a patch in their own manhours and at their own cost,
to fix something that was sold broken to them and is endangering them and others is highly arrogant to say the least.

Some of microsoft's customers getting some files encrypted is not a real problem. The real problems with microsoft's business tactics lie in the dangers that come with other possible uses of the same vulnerabilities.

Using a wormable remote code execution vulnerability such as the one used by wannacry, one can make laptop batteries explode, ventilators halt and cpus catch fire. (and the buildings they are in shortly afterwards)

Using a wormable remote code execution vulnerability such as the one used by wannacry, considering microsoft's installed base and market penetration,
one can easily ddos the entire internet down for quite some time.

When a few million microsoft machines start to ddos random other ips there won't be any 'downloading patches' anymore, there won't be any downloading of anything anymore for quite a while, as the internet will be completely down, and not just for microsoft customers.

Now, I suggest, a certain party with slightly wider-established diplomatic immunity than ours, just hacks and permanently disables all remaining vulnerable nodes with a text display routine in the bootsector telling them how to 1: restore the bootsector and 2: apply the patch or (preferably) install a different operating system.

A more proactive approach, such as hacking into and shutting down or force-patching all remaining vulnerable boxes is desired, as well as a criminal investigation into microsoft itself and the way they do product development and bugfixing.

Bothering chasing whomever made wannacry and whomever will make the no-doubt 1000s of other worms and virusses exploiting this vulnerability is of no use whatsoever, the -real- problem, is microsoft's way of product development and release.

This is not a matter of selling a car without seatbelts, this is a matter of deliberately selling a car where the wheels break off and hit bystanders in the head, to spare a few cents on proper development. Typical american garbage which does not belong on the EU market.

Pull them off the road.

On May 14, 2017 EC3 wrote:

> If you want to share any other prevention, protection or awareness information with us, please do not hesitate to contact us.

 

Yeah! I do. Thank you.

 

To prevent, protect and raise awareness, it is necessary to estimate the damage that this virus will cause and to charge this amount from the US Government and Microsoft.

 

Microsoft has created a "flaw", a port for the NSA to spy on governments and businesses around the world. When the "software", created by the NSA, to use that port was hacked, the NSA informed Microsoft that it released a patch to "fix the flaw". And did it quietly, not to arouse suspicion.

 

This distinguished company still tried to get high gains with the misfortune of others by selling patch to OS prior to the W7. Until a young Englishman created a key to unlock hijacked computers. And this patch became free.

 

Do you want to criminalize the hacker who is hijacking computers? Wrong! Be grateful to him as you should be to Snowden.

 

Marilson

By honest competition and true capitalism.