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As I mentioned earlier, it is NOT the NHS that has been attacked, just the parts of it that have not invested wisely, be that in equipment or staff training. My local medical systems are all up and running as normal. Although they generally run Windows 7, I do not recollect seeing XP era kit anywhere within this region’s Health Authority.
However, I guess even this region are going to have to budget for a Win10 upgrade within the next couple of years as Win7 support stops iirc in 2020. What to me was a bit of a killer blow was the Ars mention that Windows Server 2012 was vulnerable as I doubt that any local servers of that vintage have been upgraded. Hopefully that was a typo.
As revealed in the latest Ars post, based on results from independent analysis from a couple of AV companies. The ransomeware is spread by a worm using the NSA exploit to infect vulnerable obsolete or unpatched machines. Once activated it continues to spread and hits any obsolete machines connected to the web.
” … wcry copies a weapons-grade exploit codenamed EternalBlue that the NSA used for years to remotely commandeer computers running Microsoft Windows. EternalBlue, which works reliably against computers running Microsoft Windows XP through Windows Server 2012,”
Like it or lump it, the problem results from a widespread criminal attack coupled with a lack of investment in new PC equipment.
Richard rather than just throwing up a smoke-screen, maybe you should be investigating just what IS the real cause of the problem and what should be done,
Failing that, I guess that you could just bury your head in Hunt’s glorious ‘sandpit’. Which I’m afraid translates to yet another Government IT disaster in the making or “We have not got a clue what we should be doing as we have no leadership, strategy or sense of direction, but whatever we do it had better be cheap”.
Ars reports that it was US Government’s NSA malware that was the root cause of the problem. As the vulnerability was patched by Microsoft back in March for Windows 7 and upwards, it looks like Dave pinpointed the NHS problems as being due to the service continuing to use obsolete XP machines and servers. Either that or gross incompetence by inexperienced or untrained IT staff.
It also looks like May’s opponents have been handed a golden Election opportunity on a plate!
I obviously missed something – I thought that this was one of the first of Agile’s failures, and had been abandoned. link
It caused me to try and find what system the Hunt idiot has promulgated in its place. All I could find is this:
“Operating with an ‘open-to-all’ approach and creating a collaborative workspace for all involved to find digital solutions for the NHS.With a rich asset and resource catalogue and a multitude of contributors, Code4Health is a fantastic sandpit environment for communities to get the most out of what can be achieved, all for the future benefit of the NHS.”
I would not be surprised to learn that this was not an ‘attack’ but rather that ‘cesspit’ might well have been substituted for sandpit, as the description reads like a disaster just waiting to happen.
[edit] It isn’t universal, my local systems are still OK.
The AShampoo Cover Studio apparently includes a printer set-up facility.
“You can “calibrate” your printout for your printer to align everything perfectly with your labels and other media. Ashampoo Cover Studio 2 automatically saves and reuses your calibration settings for every printer, paper format and paper orientation (portrait/landscape) you use. Just calibrate once, then forget about it. ”
Looks like a case of RTFM or search in the software Help pages.
Just Google ‘British Rail privatisation’. Virtually every entry examines in detail just why it was a disastrous failure by John Major. Not one deals with its successes (for very good reason). I rest my case.
There is one dated paper in 2002 that fairly dispassionately lists the initial problems of privatisation, and other than Network Rail nothing has changed for the better and much for the worse (especially Southern Rail and inflationary ticket prices). It is quite a good read, and I believe historically accurate.
True Steve, but of itself it does not allow you to see whether the activity was ‘normal’ or due to some botnet on a device sending out DDOS messages. You would need to monitor usage stats by each device to look for any abnormalities and my router certainly does not help with that at all.
Having suffered for years under the disastrous effects of the privatization of British Rail (artificial division of responsibilities, rail services and even train services) capped by years of poxy Southern Rail mismanagement I am all for renationalising the Railway as it was never this bad under British Rail even in the Winter of Discontent.
If you do settle on meeting in a Pub, then I recommend booking a table for drinks/food etc as the Central Manchester pubs are a zoo between 5 and 8 pm (better ones are even worse than my unfavoured pub-chain Weatherspoons which commonly has pavement spill-over). I’m sorry that I cannot recommend good pubs as I only go a couple of times a year with my Manc SWMBO. We always go to her teenager haunts – those that survived the IRA that is! However even these are still jumping with life in the early evening.
Richard, most ISP provided routers include a DMZ which is basically just a router firewall setting that opens (part) of your network to the outside world. It sort of makes the main ICO recommendations a bit moot as nearly every family containing a teenager will have set up a DMZ to allow gaming action. In a way a DMZ is akin to the Open Wifi that Drezha was suggesting or that used by BT Open Wifi.
About the only thing that securing your router really achieves is to stop malfactors from pwning your physical router and setting it to always point to their spam/Trojan links. As there are plenty of other ways of piggybacking this action via conventional hacks (including manufacturers back-doors), it really only stops the less adept script-kiddies from being a random nuisance.
On your other point of checking for unauthorised activity: most ISP provided router/modems provide no facilities allowing you to check other than total up/down stats.
If you wonder why you don’t get all that info, the answer is that checking the logs is too hard for 99% of users. Something like Glasswire software can give those really interested a rough guide but you need a Windows server set-up to make it at all useful. (Linux has other tools but again you would need a server) but I do not think it can show if your physical router has been pwned and re-routing shims inserted into its Linux firmware.
I personally think that the only people really at risk of opening everything up are students in hall. They really should lock everything down in order to to protect against teenager’s sense of humour. :wacko:
There is an element of science in the Ayuvedic methods used by my Hindu opposite number. According to the Mayo Clinic about one million bacteria are required to cause disease.
“Because more than a million cholera bacteria — approximately the amount you’d find in a glass of contaminated water — are needed to cause illness, cholera usually isn’t transmitted through casual person-to-person contact.”
I guess by diluting about 10000 times, he was only ever getting a restricted number of bacteria or viruses – which perhaps tended to provide a degree of daily oral immunization against a large number of different bugs (even perhaps flu as the pig/fish/duck/human cycle is fairly well proven in Asia).
If you join BT Wifi (probably any FON) you agree to making your access point into a BT Wifi point which is restricted to other BT or FON users. In return you get access to all similar access points. The free BT wifi coverage is therefore quite extensive in city areas. link. This used to be BT Fon with the FON bit having international links – I’m not too sure of their relationship with international FON now, but I think it still works.
Richard, I agree with the gist of what you are saying, but I don’t know that we as yet have the right terminology.
‘Evolution’ has generally become associated with the mutation of DNA. The latest research tends to point toward living organisms adjusting their RNA in response to environmental factors and the modified RNA plus its associated impacts on gene expression is then passed on to the children . (Sins of fathers etc.).
Some of these changes are probably due to our friendly (or unfriendly) gut bacteria, and perhaps having too sterile an environment. (a finger is now frequently pointed towards this as being associated with the modern asthma ‘epidemic’). A similar example of environmental exposure is that of nut allergies where more recent research shows that parents should be encouraged towards giving very young children nuts in order to avoid future nut allergy issues.
When I worked with a JV in India I knew a Hindu who was a strict follower of the Ayuvedic principles – part of which entailed him going for a daily walk in the countryside and sampling roadside ditches and ponds into a small bottle. He would then bring this evil brew back to the office, take about a quarter of a teaspoonful and dilute it with about 5 litres of clean bottled water which he would then consume throughout the day. I will admit that despite my wondering on which day he was going to catch cholera he never had a days illness during the couple of years I spent (on and off) in that part of the world. He also treated his young children in a similar manner, a practice which would probably have resulted in them all being put in care had they lived in the UK!
I think Drezha was thinking of DONATING surplus access. I never consider I am stealing access if I use an open wifi link, neither do I abuse it as bandwidth is in any case restricted.
Just to add again to Steve’s comment, one other more or less universal finding from the researchers is that cannabis is NOT a gateway drug though if it is more easily obtained then it is more widely used. (obvious really!)
Richard’s response came in while I was posting but I’d decriminalise the lot and spend the money saved on rehabilitation and education.
Laws are introduced for a variety of reasons – could one of these have been the close connection between MP’s Board memberships of distilleries and breweries, or the vogue at those times for all forms of Prohibition?
Sometimes it is better to address the cause of a problem rather than its symptoms. I do not think cannabis has ever been a ’cause’.
As we have specific receptors for cannabis hard wired into all our brains (well at least those with a touch of Neanderthal!) there seems to me to be an evolutionary connection between hemp and humans – for good or ill.
Picking up on Steve’s point with respect to different ‘types’ of people, there are definite links between different races and different ailments (For example Nordic types are more susceptible to plague). This also applies to mental illnesses with many showing a racial bias. Unfortunately the likelihood of forming addictions also seems to run on racial lines all of which makes any study very difficult to design and likely to be subject to criticism.
Cannabis has been completely legal (ALL activities) in Uruguay for getting on for four years, some 23 US States have relaxed controls to various extents. Around the world the position is mixed with some surprises to me. Spain!!!
There SHOULD by now be enough evidence to make a considered unbiased scientific analysis of the data coming out of all this. Unfortunately this seems not to be the case as most of the analysis I have seen has been biased (both ways) by the various researchers, to the extent that it is obvious that some of the researchers have been going in with a predetermined position. Discussion about drug legislation almost takes on a religious mantle – one argument against decriminalising actually said ‘The Pope would not like it!’.
About the only aspect that seems to generate little argument is the over-riding economic argument – it saves the Government money, and might help reduce more serious crime. link
Thanks everyone – something to think about!
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