As a Data Privacy Day related advisory, please be reminded of the importance of protecting your personal and sensitive data by keeping operating systems and applications up to date on all of your devices. Devices running outdated operating systems or applications are commonly targeted by malicious actors seeking to exploit known security bugs and loopholes in programs and systems as a way to gain access to your data and sensitive information. Malicious actors rely on the simple fact that users/admins largely ignore updates/patching and thereby supply rich attack surfaces for anyone who can develop an exploit.
An example of this is the global WannaCry ransomware worm. WannaCry exploited a security bug in outdated Microsoft Windows Operating systems, like Windows XP, for which there is no longer any technical support. Within a day of it’s outbreak,WannaCry infected more than 230,000 computer systems in 150 countries and caused approximately $4 billion in financial losses. WannaCry remains an active exploit although the patch to prevent it was available several months before the exploit began in 2017.
Resources:
- https://thehackernews.com/2019/01/software-vulnerabilities-hacking.html
- https://www.csoonline.com/article/3227906/ransomware/what-is-wannacry-ransomware-how-does-it-infect-and-who-was-responsible.html
- https://www.symantec.com/blogs/feature-stories/wannacry-lessons-learned-1-year-later