There was a good thread on this a while back. Why do these tools exist in the first place? Either way its pretty disturbing that they were leaked.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/wo...13f7ZGghYo

Quote:Hackers exploiting data stolen from the United States government conducted extensive cyberattacks on Friday that hit dozens of countries, severely disrupting Britain’s public health system and wreaking havoc on tens of thousands of computers elsewhere, including Russia’s ministry for internal security.

Hospitals in Britain appeared to be the most severely affected by the attacks, which aimed to blackmail computer users by seizing their data.

Sent from my SM-J700T using CSNbbs mobile app

(05-12-2017 05:24 PM)Hood-rich Wrote:  There was a good thread on this a while back. Why do these tools exist in the first place? Either way its pretty disturbing that they were leaked.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/wo...13f7ZGghYo

Quote:Hackers exploiting data stolen from the United States government conducted extensive cyberattacks on Friday that hit dozens of countries, severely disrupting Britain’s public health system and wreaking havoc on tens of thousands of computers elsewhere, including Russia’s ministry for internal security.

Hospitals in Britain appeared to be the most severely affected by the attacks, which aimed to blackmail computer users by seizing their data.

Sent from my SM-J700T using CSNbbs mobile app

So we can use them against the Iranians and North Koreans and also the Russians when they use them on us.

Edit: It was a vulnerability that was exploited. Not a hacking tool. Hackers created the tool (Wcry Ransomware) that exploited the vulnerability.

The idiots at NHS share most of the blame for clinging onto XP. They were running an unsupported Windows XP platform throughout their network. Who the hell still runs XP? They were warned back in December and did nothing. The vulnerability was patched by Microsoft with windows updates in March and NHS still...did nothing. They brought this mess onto themselves.

All NSA did was identify the vulnerability. And they notified Microsoft WELL before the dump. The vulnerability was patched a month before it was released in the wild.

I don't have a problem with us having this capability. The problem I have is us not making sure this capability isn't secured. This is a weapon and should be secured as such.

This is something the intelligence committees should look into so they make sure the NSA (and other agencies) are doing what is necessary to protect their data and that heads roll for those negligent in their data security duties.

This was stolen from an intelligence agency. Protecting things like this should be obvious for them.