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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : WannaCry worm...
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Grogster Admin Group  Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9748 |
I feel your pain.  I also work in the PC service trade. And you can prepare youself for the horror that is Windows 10-S, about to be mass-installed on all shop-bought PC's and laptops from now on. You know - Win10-S - that only allows you to install apps from the Microsoft Store, and will not let you install ANY box software, and this will roll out as standard on many new PC's and laptops very soon. You then have to pay $50 to unlock Win10-S to Win10-Pro, where you CAN install your own software.... I predict thousands of customers who will have no idea that is the policy when they buy their new machine, only to find that they can't install their own software on it when they get it home - by design.  I expect to get a few service calls when W10S comes on the scene: "My computer won't install any of my software! Does it have a virus?!" ....but I digress a little - sorry.  Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| Boppa Guru  Joined: 08/11/2016 Location: AustraliaPosts: 816 |
Yes already know about THAT particular version of `randsomware' In fact, can anyone explain to me the difference between what 10S and this worm is? IMHO- there isnt one- except on is done by an anonomouse person, and one is done by bill gates.... I dont particular like micro$oft (microshaft etc etc), havent done for years, which is why I refuse to use them if at all possible Luckily I have been involved more on the industrial rather than consumer side of the IT industry- where we still use serial ports, and software (and O/S's) tend to migrate very slowly (still use winCE lol) In fact that writer shows very little understanding of how industry views the computer world- he was complaining about how the NHS in the UK was `negligent' in still using XP- whereas in actual fact it would be negligent of their IT departments to keep on slapping in new (and bug ridden) o/s's in situations where a software glitch could indeed literally kill someone.... not to mention the huge expense involved in retraining all the staff to find the way to use the new O/S,rewriting custom (and VERY expensive) software and in many cases having to get new approvals for it to be used (I expect that like in the heavy industry computing world, software in the health industry would need to be certified as being FFP before allowing it control, and that certification can be both expensive and time consuming- I know one major software package that was submitted for certification for vista, and before it actually got its certification, vista was no more! win7 had been released!!! |
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BobD Guru Joined: 07/12/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 935 |
Grogs certain of the Microsoft supplied laptops have until the 31 December 2017 to upgrade for free to Win 10 Pro. This offer may extend to other machines. https://www.microsoft.com/en-au/store/d/product/90FC23DV6SNZ/20TL The detail is down in the Tech Specs and the footnotes. Bob |
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| Boppa Guru Joined: 08/11/2016 Location: AustraliaPosts: 816 |
As an aside- computers with serial ports (or heaven forbid if you need a parallel port) are becoming increasingly hard to find, if you need such a beast, can I suggest looking at nanoform industrial computers??? They arent the latest and greatest processors, but they are still available from new (altho somewhat $$) with up to 4 serial 232 (or even 485) serial ports, parallel ports, usually run of a single rail (12 or 24vdc) supply rail and (great for media players) dont require cooling fans, relying on passive cooling via heatsinks (I got a couple of damaged ones squirrelled away for when I build my workshop for cnc stuff) :-) |
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MicroBlocks Guru Joined: 12/05/2012 Location: ThailandPosts: 2209 |
To be fair. If there was no Microsoft with all its peculiarities i would not have a job back then. Servicing people who have no clue what they are doing is the bread and butter of many businesses. Could you imagine most people having any version of Linux? Now that would be a great breadwinner as lots more people would not have a clue. I still like windows better just because they have all the drivers and most of the software i need. Windows 10 is the best version in my opinion. The 10s version will protect most people against themselves. The smartphone experience proves that. And to be a competitor with ChromeOS what can you do as a company. Everything is just moving to store based Apps and cloud. Not what i would wish for as i like to have things local, but for the 99% it is great. The worry for servicing people with windows 10s that they have a lot less to do, because it will just work. Microblocks. Build with logic. |
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| Boppa Guru Joined: 08/11/2016 Location: AustraliaPosts: 816 |
Well I can confirm that the one xp device I tried the patch on, broke its networking completely- no access to the net, no access to my media hub server, no access to the network printer tried rerunning the wizard (ok I'm lazy) and still no go go in and manually set up, still no go so reghosting its drive atm, guess I'll just have to take my chances lol (and don't talk to me about win10, of the systems that I know of that upgraded- about half had issues, no apparent pattern to it, no one manufacturer or bios) straight out of the box systems worked (you'd want them to!!) and 2 people are looking at a class action against telstra due to unwanted forced upgrades that left them with phone bills in the thousands (a lot of people round here are using 3g or 4g wireless router/hub thingos from telstra), and with some win10 `upgrades' forcing themselves onto people at $10 a gig, and getting close to 100gigs of data downloaded (and then using your data to `share' win10 downloads to other people so micro$oft doesn't have to use their servers to deliver it) Telstra have refunded/cut some peoples phonebills after they complained, but not others... Luckily a lot of people arent very trusting an use prepaid sims to prevent this type of thing happening, those with postpaid accounts now know why everyone was telling them to switch to prepaid, even tho it's (marginally) more expensive $10 a gig against $8 a gig postpaid calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean..... |
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| MicroBlocks Guru Joined: 12/05/2012 Location: ThailandPosts: 2209 |
Yep those are the 99% that need help. Not much to do about that. With a mobile connection you alwasy have to be weary about what is going over the line. Updating your computer will alwyas cost a lot of bandwidth so it is the first thing you shut off when having a new system. If you don't, then well lesson learned. Microblocks. Build with logic. |
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| Boppa Guru Joined: 08/11/2016 Location: AustraliaPosts: 816 |
Problem is that I have a very rural location, cant even get adsl, even the 3g box needs an outside antenna to work, its that or dialup...... Don't even get a choice of carriers, its telstra or a piece of wet string (about the same i've found lol)- optus was going to install a tower in 2014- its 2017 and still waiting.... I am looking at a sat connection (some locals have it via nbn) but apparently it doesn't work so well in cloudy weather, and pricing is still a lot for the gigs ($1 a gig)plus expensive to install (luckily I go to my sisters lot, she has NBN unlimited, so I do all my downloading at her place lol) edit to add- the people concerned had turned off autoupdates and were on older systems, it was the rather underhanded way that microshaft did the win10 `upgrades' to win7/8 users that caused the massive phone bills, what upset these couples was that telstra decided to give some people a discount/ cut the bill entirely, while others are being made to pay it in full and are being threatened with disconnection if they dont |
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| robert.rozee Guru Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 2461 |
"What do you call an old, unpatched and easily hacked PC? An ATM" see: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/26/atm_hacking_all_too_easy/ "ATMs are essentially PCs running very old versions of operating systems, such as Windows XP". another (2014) article reckons that at that time 95% of the world's ATMs were running windows XP. it is fair to say that XP will be with us for a very long time for very good reasons that are not practical to change - perhaps it is time for lawmakers to embrace this reality and enforce a little 'social resposibility' upon our friends at microsoft. open-source XP, anyone? cheers, rob :-) |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 4126 |
Don't believe all you read - the earliest this threat was known about (outside NSA) seems to have been March this year! (With no patch for XP at the time. BTW, who knew many ATMs run XP...) I checked, and my firewall does not allow port 445 through (not that I have a Windows machine on my LAN). John |
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| Boppa Guru Joined: 08/11/2016 Location: AustraliaPosts: 816 |
Hands up- I knew they did (and most still do) run a commercial offering of XP (I noticed that some are running wince these days many air traffic control systems are xp/c as well I suspect that almost everywhere industrial equipment is used, they tend to stay with a stable and well known O/S like XP, simply because it works and continues to work, very well A lot of interface equipment programs wouldn't run under 10, and the cost (and downtime involved) in pulling them out to replace with ones that could work with it would stop them being replaced anyway- its easier to fix/replace the pc than embedded devices (even if it means pirating the xp lol) I know that where my mum used to work, I supplied them with several xp boxes after they got flooded when a roofpanel collapsed, as they had to interface with several cnc mills and lathes,some of which still run DOS!!! Replacing THOSE simply wasnt an option- the cheapest one they have is over a quarter of a million dollars `sorry, it wont work with win10, how about you just replace the mills and lathes....' LOL |
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| robert.rozee Guru Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 2461 |
i do believe a little basic logical reasoning is appropriate at this juncture  following on from the article titled "If you're still using Windows XP, you're a menace to society"... premiss 1: "If you are still using XP... you should be shipped out to a remote island with no internet access to fend for yourselves so you can't infect anyone else." premiss 2: a large number of ATMs and industrial equipment still makes use of XP, and this can not realistically be changed. ditto for many air traffic control systems. conclusion: most ATMs, air traffic control systems, and industrial equipment should be shipped off to a remote island with no internet access  not that i'm wishing to stir people up, but once you start digging a little deeper you quickly discover that blanket statements about banishing XP - while nice in theory - are far more problematic in the hard light of reality. what is worrying is that in a few years time microsoft will be saying the same thing about windows 7 systems. and a few years after that, the same about windows 10. where will it stop? just found another example: UK’s Nuclear Submarines runs Windows XP for Submarines™ (Dec 25, 2016) https://mspoweruser.com/uks-nuclear-submarines-runs-windows-xp-submarines/ cheers, rob :-) |
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| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9748 |
@ JohnS, Re: NHS - OK, then. @ Rob: While I certainly expect that there is some truth in the claim that MS cannot support the latest, greatest features in the architecture of an old OS such as XP, I have no doubt that a good percentage of the whole upgrading cycle, is simply to get the user locked into perpetual OS upgrades. They don't make any serious money, by only selling you ONE copy of Windoze...... Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9748 |
This is a good video on YouTube about this situation. The person doing the talking puts it calmy into perspective, and lays down how it works and what it does. I like this video. Video link. Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| Chris Roper Senior Member  Joined: 19/05/2015 Location: South AfricaPosts: 280 |
After the recent leaks of hacking tools from the NSA and the Central Intelligence Agency, cyberespionage critics, including NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, have criticised the agencies for hoarding vulnerabilities for their own use instead of flagging them to companies like Microsoft in the interest of public safety. Following the WannaCry attack, one of the biggest in history, Microsoft itself has joined the ranks of the critics. In a strongly worded blog post, Brad Smith, the company’s president and chief legal officer, wrote: "Repeatedly, exploits in the hands of governments have leaked into the public domain and caused widespread damage. An equivalent scenario with conventional weapons would be the US military having some of its Tomahawk missiles stolen. And this most recent attack represents a completely unintended but disconcerting link between the two most serious forms of cybersecurity threats in the world today — nation-state action and organised criminal action." But would M$ patch the old OS or just use the info to frighten you into buying an upgrade? Personally I hold M$ as much responsible as the NSA and the Hackers. A lot more people would let auto updates install if M$ didn't abuse the process to install bloatware or disable features that you use. The last straw for me was sending the whole of WIN 10 as a critical update of 3GB, that is abuse in the extreme. I still have the update service disabled and manually install any critical updates on win7. At End of Life it will become Linux Mint, not windows XX. Cheers Chris http://caroper.blogspot.com/ |
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| MicroBlocks Guru Joined: 12/05/2012 Location: ThailandPosts: 2209 |
As someone who also programmed a few XP-E systems there is only one way to keep relatively save. That is to keep being updated (XP-e is until 2019) or upgrade. If XP is chosen and all recommended programming practices are follow any program will still run on any newer version of windows including the server editions. Still have some VB6 programs in the wild and they work fine on the newest server2016 and windows 10. If going around windows and using DOS level stuff and writing drivers specifically for XP without following those recommended practices you are then responsible for making sure future upgrades will be possible. I have written enough software to know that the ones i programmed 'clean and proper' still work to this day, and the old ones that used DOS tricks, direct BIOS calls or other tricks that relied on specific hardware drivers do not. We are now in a 64 bit age, the 32 bit is still working as long as it was done right. You can not expect programs that write directly to the printer port to control a CNC will run without problems on a new machine which in most cases does not even have a printer port. A lot has changed and if we like things to get better and faster, well then we have to upgrade. It is already amazing that software written in 1998 still runs great. I wished my cnc and lasercutter would work with windows 10, but the provided programs are not updated, one company does not exist anymore etc. So the thing to do is to isolate it from anything coming from outside. Even USB stick, SD cards as they can carry viruses too. Sure it is inconvenient. But less bothersome then losing it completely to some virus or ransom ware. The linux stuff is still not viable for desktop. Every year the past 20 years was the 'year of the linux desktop', but so far still not so much. The recent change by Ubuntu is just another example. So it is not Windows specific. In Linux and Apple there is also a lot going on that is not backward compatible. Microblocks. Build with logic. |
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| robert.rozee Guru Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 2461 |
alas, i've seen neither 'better' nor 'faster' since windows 2000. what i have seen is more 'glitter', more 'snazziness', and quite a bit of 'WE think this is a good idea so we will try to force everyone to do it'. btw, my next desktop computer, which has already been purchased but not yet set up, will be a raspberry pi 3 running raspbian and hooked up to a 23" 1080p monitor. it will fulfil 95% of my everyday computing requirements, running firefox and libre office. the other 5% (development work, photoshop) will stay on an XP netbook. cheers, rob :-) |
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| MicroBlocks Guru Joined: 12/05/2012 Location: ThailandPosts: 2209 |
If those are your computing requirements you have lots of choices. :) I need a windows environment 99% of the time. If i look back over all the version my favorite would be NT4. :) Running on a single processor with 256Mb of RAM. Build a few voice response systems on those servicing 64 telephone lines with ease. I did have to put in more memory though. 512Mb was more then enough. :) Some of those are still running (not connected to internet!) and haven't been restarted in years, they just keep on going. My favorite database is SQL server 7. I still have a NT4 with SQL server 7 running in a VM for a website (for nostalgic reasons) that is still running since 1998. It has been isolated very well and only allows connections from certain IP addresses. Light and fast is currently happening again as so much is moving to the cloud. Server 2016 is much leaner then 2012 and 2008 especially the core version. Being lightweight is now also in the interest of Microsoft as they can then run many more instances of it in the cloud with the same resources. And it is much more secure, especially important for now and the future as has been proven recently. Microblocks. Build with logic. |
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| BobD Guru Joined: 07/12/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 935 |
I still have a Windows application that was published in the early 1990s, running on Win 10. It doesn't use the registry as it was pre Win 95. It needs NTVDM to be active and it installs its INI file into the \Windows folder. Ever since Win 8, I have had to assist it to install. Apart from all that you wouldn't know it was that old. It went through Y2K without blinking. |
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| hitsware Guru Joined: 23/11/2012 Location: United StatesPosts: 535 |
> a raspberry pi 3 running raspbian That's now my main rig too. Happened by accident. I've only one HDMI monitor and couldn't get the composite right so ended up on the Pi. And it works FINE |
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