England’s NHS PCs Under Cyber Attack

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cyber security, malware, windows

Note: the NHS is England’s medical/health system

The NHS has been hit as part of a global cyber-attack that threw hospitals and businesses in the UK and across the world into chaos.

The unprecedented attack on Friday affected 12 countries and at least 16 NHS trusts in the UK, compromising British IT systems that underpin patient safety. Staff across the NHS were locked out of their computers and trusts had to divert emergency patients.

…

“If large numbers of NHS organisations failed to act on a critical notice from Microsoft two months ago, then whose fault is that?” Anderson said. “This is the sort of thing for which the secretary of state should get roasted in parliament.”

Alan Woodward, visiting professor of computing at the University of Surrey, said that the attack’s success “is likely to be because some organisations have either not applied the patch released by Microsoft, or they are using outdated operating systems”.

Amazingly, NHS’s failure to maintain their Windows PCs is the reason they are in trouble today.

Link: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/may/12/hospitals-across-england-hit-by-large-scale-cyber-attack

Here’s some more info: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/05/a-massive-ransomware-attack-on-the-nhs/526524/

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Windows 10 Spyware Backported to Win 7 and 8

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adware, privacy, spyware, windows

If you’re a Windows user, and I feel sorry for those trapped on Windows, you likely have heard that the upcoming Windows 10 is free and is loaded with Microsoft spyware and adware. Now it turns out that Microsoft is adding this spyware and adware into Win 7 and Win 8 via software updates, a processes called backporting. To make matters even worse, this spyware communicates with Microsoft’s servers through nonstandard channels within the OS, so the only currently known way to circumvent is with a customizable router firewall.

Here’s the link: http://www.extremetech.com/computing/213183-once-more-with-tracking-microsoft-backports-privacy-invading-windows-10-features-to-windows-7-8

Some Toxic Windows Malware

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computer virus, malware, rootkit, windows

A friend of my step son came out of the Phoenix heat to vist. He brought with him an older windows pc that has been transformed into a door stop by malware. Guess who was expected resurrect the thing? Yes, me. I do earn my daily bread working with computers, software, etc. But I really don’t care for the desktop stuff. Oh well. All of us in this field get to be the uncompensated support staff for relatives, friends, friends of relatives, etc.

I expected the usual viruses, adware, and spyware that plagues windows pc’s which are not armored with firewalls, virus scanners, constant os updaters, etc. This one had a few viruses and spybots, but it also had a rootkit. I have never encountered one of these, though I have read about them. I had to peel back layers of malware just to be able to boot into safe mode command line. After a while I decided to just reinstall windows, replacing everything.

Makes me appreciate our Apple MacBookPro and iMac even more!

Why Malware is Avoidable on Macs

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Computers, mac, malware, os x, virus, windows

The Unavoidable Malware Myth: Why Apple Won’t Inherit Microsoft’s Malware Crown — RoughlyDrafted Magazine via kwout

Interesting article explaining that malware such as viruses, adware, spam bots, etc are a major problem on Windows and not on Apple Macs. The reason is the poor quality of Windows.

iMac

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apple, comuters, imac, os x, windows

About a month ago we bought a 24 inch Apple imac. This thing is huge. We decided that we have had enough MS windows, thank you. There are lots of applications we use that are not on Linux. And the only downside of Apple is the cost upfront is higher. We bought 4GB of ram from a third party supplier and installed it ourselves, cost $171 delivered and about 15 minutes of labor. Apple wanted big bucks for added memory. We also bought the Parallels program that enables Windows (in our case XP) to run within a window on the mac. Of course this requires a copy of windows, which we had.

Here’s Gary with the new iMac.