In case you haven’t been paying attention. Starting Friday, May 12th the NHS or British Healthcare system along with dozens of other companies throughout the UK, Russia, Ukraine, India, China Italy, Egypt, South America and the U.S. have been under attack. Their computers have been held hostage with Malware that demands $300 bucks per computer and that number is supposed to double over time. Or you lose your data forever. Referred to as “WannaCry” named by a batman villain because it makes its victims… you get it… The vulnerability was first uncovered by the N.S.A. in an effort to patch any known security flaws in the Windows operating system. Consequently, you must be running the most recent version of the Windows Operating System with all current security patches and updates installed to avoid… wanting to cry.

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“We run the updates when I say to run the updates!!!”

The really frustrating part of all of this story is the organization sitting center stage for this debacle, UK’s so-called “socialized” healthcare system the NHS. Starting Friday, May 12th all of their sensitive data, pertaining to thousands of citizens was inaccessible. So they told people to stay home if they didn’t have a true emergency.

“…Maybe we just don’t pay them?..”

Now it should be noted before we go too much further that twenty-two year old Marcus Hutchis, a Brit who works for LA based cyber-security firm Kryptos-Logic (America for the win). Has reportedly slowed if not completely stopped the attacks by Monday the 15th simply by registering a domain the malware was using to host the attacks. This technique effectively taking the domain away from the malware host. An effort he insists he didn’t do himself. 

And while plenty of people around the world are still under attack this truly is a magnificent feat. Especially considering the whole world was clamoring to gather its elders to light up the blogosphere about how this shouldn’t happen and could’ve been stopped and maybe we just don’t pay them? One of our youths found a way to take care of it because “it’s the right thing to do.”

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“I guess we’re closing up shop forever. Great work everyone!”

“…out of date Windows XP to run… national healthcare…”

The fallout to this debacle has whipped-up a finger pointing frenzy from Microsoft blaming the NSA for “stockpiling” malware. Making it easy for hackers to find. And the NSA knowing about vulnerabilities like WannaCry years in advance and doing nothing. But the big one and this one hurts, NHS allowed their support agreement with Windows to expire two years ago. Leaving them with the woefully out of date Windows XP to run much of their national healthcare system.

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“We couldn’t afford the vaccine so we bought everyone fun masks!”

These are all bad news resulting in horrifying circumstances but I’m not sure we are blaming the right people or persons or systems.

I can, however, speculate liability. In the automotive industry, when something about the car might kill somebody. Those car companies have to pay. They have to replace or repair and pay big government penalties. 

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“But I like bending my neck that way.”

If we apply the same logic,

all we need is proof that people’s lives were in real danger. Data we could most likely acquire from NHS after they’re done crying as it were. And “Windows was his namo,” we should have a culprit on the hook for this kind of egregious public safety oversight. For instance, the company that made the operating system so vulnerable and didn’t issue free security updates in the first place. Although, they have since issued that much-needed patch for free to anyone who needs it. But that kind of free update generosity might have required a more open source approach to this problem from the outset. A perspective that certain megaliths have fought against for years (even while expanding their open source arsenal to stay relevant in today’s market.)

Which does beg the question, did capitalism get in the way of public health and safety in this case? After years of foot-dragging and customer to enterprise level complaints, will we finally be able to say Windows has killed people? Let’s wait and find out.

Microsoft… there I said it.

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