Blue screen of death saved Windows XP from WannaCry ransomware

[Nomen]

I'm posting this here in win-7 because in the end, the article is more relevant for that OS in a funny, yet sad way.   And also because I like to poke win-7 in the eye every once in a while...

============

Blue screen of death saved Windows XP from WannaCry ransomware, say security researchers

Researchers suggest WannaCry attacks against most Windows XP systems failed to install the ransomware payload -- but crashed systems while trying.

May 31, 2017

When WannaCry hit the world in mid-May, much focus was put on how the widespread use of the out-of-date Windows XP operating system helped it spread so fast.

The UK's National Health service was one of the highest-profile victims of the cyberattack -- and many of its bespoke systems still rely on Windows XP -- while Microsoft were quick to release a security patch for the long unsupported operating system.

And while Windows XP systems were among those affected by WannaCry, later analysis suggests that 98% (it had to be 98% eh?) of victims were running Windows 7.

But that's not to say WannaCry wasn't problematic for targets using Windows XP, with a new report by cybersecurity researchers at Kryptos suggesting that while the operating system was mostly immune from falling victim to the ransomware, many failed attacks resulted in computers crashing and displaying the 'blue-screen of death' and requiring a hard reset (oh, the horror - a hard reset)

Researchers tested WannaCry ransomware against a number of operating systems running in a test environment: Windows XP with Service Pack 2, Windows XP with Service Pack 3, Windows 7 64 bit with Service Pack 1, and Windows Server 2008 with Service Pack 1.

While attacks against Windows 7 successfully installed WannaCry, after a number of attempts the supposedly vulnerable Windows XP was much more resilient to the ransomware than expected, with the OS running Service Pack 2 not becoming infected at all.

However, Windows XP running SP 2 was affected, but rather than becoming infected with WannaCry and requesting a ransom in return for locked files, the system kept blue-screening and rebooting itself.

"The worst-case scenario, and likely scenario, is that WannaCry caused many unexplained blue-screen-of-death crashes," say researchers.

While this phenomenon will have no doubt been frustrating for organisations which found their machines repeatedly crashing, at least they hadn't been infected by ransomware.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/blue-screen-of-death-saved-windows-xp-from-wannacry-ransomware-say-security-researchers/

 

[jaclaz]

Well, it should have been posted here :

jaclaz