A lot of older shop networked tills and industrial systems still run bespoke versions of Windows XP.
If you are a criminal then an armed robbery of a bank will get you 5 years plus, selling drugs will easily get you 20 years+ and hacking computers to stealing identities, credit card details, using ransomware etc, etc to make lots of money will give you a 99.5% chance of never being caught and if you are one of the 0.5% your solicitor claims that little 'Johnny Hacker' has mental / personality issues and can't help it so if you are very unlucky you will get a 6-18 month's suspended sentence but more likely a conditional discharge.
Some of these cases have cost companies and victims millions of £££. Unsurprisingly, this along with counterfeit goods are these days, organised criminal gangs and individual criminals careers of choice and they are now some of the fastest-growing global industries.
Until politicians start taking criminals that like to call themselves hackers seriously, then the current average 200 million attacks per year, and growing, the average website receives will continue. You only have to go and look at your server logs to realise automated hacker tools are constantly bombarding you 24 hours a day looking for vulnerabilities.
Personally, I would like to see any attack on any IT system unless you are a licenced security hacker and have the website owners permission made a serious criminal offence. Would we put up with criminals attacking and testing our local bank's physical security 24/7, no and nor should society have to put up with this happening with impunity on our electronic systems. There is also much that the government can do to make the tracing of any attacks by the police much easier. A low-level cheap punishment would be to ban the criminal from using a computer, tablet, smartphone and having or using any Internet connection for x months as a first sentence and then escalate as required with subsequent offences.
The stealing of identities, card details, compromising photographs, infidelity website account details etc, etc is not a victimless crime and in the worst cases, it has resulted in people dying, as some might with these postponed NHS operations.
Will our politicians use these latest attacks as one of many recent global tsunamis of attacks over the last 12 months as a wake-up call, I won't be holding my breath?
Author
Topic: Massive ransomware attack on NHS (Read 13263 times)