What was the NSA aware of? Attacking with WannaCry ransomware is live proof that all systems should be updated with the latest patches, as Microsoft usually has them before the exploitation of a exploitative mass exploits. Let's look at some details about the latest malware.
A Washington Post article reveals that the NSA reported the vulnerability that facilitated the spread of WannaCry to Microsoft after discovering that a team hackers stole it from their systems.
The US National Security Service was hit by a cyberattack by the US Shadow Brokers last year. Hackers managed to intercept many tools used by the Service to infect Windows computers.
Most of these exploits used Windows flaws, so their leakage on the internet could have led to large-scale attacks. To avoid this, the NSA reported bugs to Microsoft to correct them, as the US Government's computers were also immediately vulnerable to the leak.
However, the service has been delayed and you may understand the word. Let's see what happened from the beginning:
After recognizing the vulnerability, Microsoft developed an update in mid-February and released it updated to supported Windows systems in March, while unsupported versions of Windows could only get the fix if they were covered by a special support license. After the massive infection with the WannaCry ransomware which started this month, Microsoft has decided to release this update for all users, including those who are still using Windows XP.
Most worrying, however, was that NSA used the same vulnerability to invade Windows systems for at least 5 years before reporting it to Microsoft. Of course, the flaw would remain hidden if Shadow Brokers did not violate NSA systems.
This is one of the reasons why Microsoft has criticized the NSA and government agencies for not directly reporting security bugs to developers, stressing that systems around the world are becoming vulnerable only because they secretly keep important vulnerabilities for their own hacking programs.
“They have repeatedly leaked online, exploited information services and caused extensive damage. An equivalent scenario is to steal conventional weapons from the US Army. such as the Tomahawk rockets. And this latest attack represents a completely unwanted and alarming link between the two most serious forms of cyber-threat in today's world - state and organized crime together. "