Which came first, the chicken or the egg? A question often asked and since we are well aware that dinosaurs laid eggs, the answer is obvious.
This week it has been reported that Boeing, amongst the biggest beasts on the planet has been hit by the WannaCry ransomware starting at, but presumably not limited to, a production facility for the 777.
As you will all recall, the WannaCry nasty utilises a suite of NSA derived exploits such as ETERNALBLUE to laterally infect machines on the same network. Once inside it spreads like headlice in a nursery and has caused significant damage worldwide, including our very own NHS. Thank the lord that Marcus Hutchins was on hand to save the day in that instance.
The SMB vulnerability, which did for the NHS (Windows 7, unpatched) has been suggested as the mechanism for infection at Boeing, unfortunately Mr Hutchins is not on hand, being on bail in the USA pending trial for crimes allegedly committed when he was a teenager.
You have to wonder if the machines at Boeing’s production facility were patched. Did they possibly think that not patching and trusting an airgap (USB controls and such) would do the trick?
If that turns out to be the case we must all worry about the impact that cost control might have down the line. A Valentine’s day report by Bloomberg this year drew attention to the ‘unapologetically hard-nosed’ approach of CEO Dennis Muilenberg.
The lack of IT representation at the board level and IT being treated in the same way as air conditioning, power and plumbing is baffling, given the rise and rise of tech businesses such as Facebook which has a market capitalisation more than double that of one of the world’s biggest aircraft manufacturers. Crazy.
Should you have taken the time to click on the link above and are not familiar with Mathematica or Wolfram Alpha, it is really worth checking out. Examine for instance the abundance of Lithium contrasted with Gold or the populations of India and China over time. Procrastination with style.
In other news, presuming WannaCry hasn’t encrypted all of the In-Flight entertainments or more worryingly the navigation and control systems on your Easter flight, Cisco systems released a swathe of updates today, mostly critical for IOS and IOS XE. Three of them are really serious and need to be addressed.
We will be advising our customers about the Cisco issues and will execute appropriate remediation. If you are not a managed service customer, please contact us at [email protected] or call 020 7517 3900 and we will be happy to help.
Unfortunately, Spring is not yet here (in London Town). That will not stop the hares doing what they do on the Discovery Channel or over indulgence in chocolate eggs. Eostre would be aghast.
Have a Good Friday. Happy Easter.
