Cyberattacks in 12 Nations Said to Use Leaked N.S.A. Hacking Tool
&gt; &quot;Microsoft rolled out a patch for the vulnerability last March, but hackers took advantage of the fact that vulnerable targets — particularly hospitals — had yet to update their systems.&quot;<p>&gt; &quot;The malware was circulated by email; targets were sent an encrypted, compressed file that, once loaded, allowed the ransomware to infiltrate its targets.&quot;<p>It sounds like the basic (?) security practices recommended by professionals - keep systems up-to-date, pay attention to whether an email is suspicious - would have covered your network. Of course, as @mhogomchunu points out in his comment - is this the sort of thing where only one weak link is needed?<p>Still. Maybe this will help the proponents of keeping government systems updated? And&#x2F;or, maybe this will prompt companies like MS to roll out security-only updates, to make it easier for sysadmins to keep their systems up-to-date...?<p>(presumably, a reason <i>why</i> these systems weren&#x27;t updated is due to functionality concerns with updates...?)