{"id":3992,"date":"2019-05-31T14:01:48","date_gmt":"2019-05-31T12:01:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.retarus.com\/blog\/en\/nsa-tool-cripples-us-local-authorities"},"modified":"2021-08-20T08:50:43","modified_gmt":"2021-08-20T06:50:43","slug":"nsa-tool-cripples-us-local-authorities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.retarus.com\/blog\/en\/nsa-tool-cripples-us-local-authorities\/","title":{"rendered":"NSA Tool Cripples US Local Authorities"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>For three\nweeks now, the computers at Baltimore\u2019s city administration have been held as\nvirtual hostages. They have been infected with ransomware that relies on the \u201cEternalBlue\u201d\nmalware developed by US military intelligence service the NSA. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\nextortionists are demanding a ransom of 13 bitcoins, which converts into roughly\n100,000 dollars and which Baltimore is unwilling to pay. Consequently, numerous\npublic services are currently not being provided as usual. And Baltimore is not\nalone. A recent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/05\/25\/us\/nsa-hacking-tool-baltimore.html\">article published in the New York\nTimes<\/a> last weekend\nreports that Allentown, Pennsylvania, and the Texan city San Antonio are among\nother cities that have already come under attack by means of EternalBlue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In local\ngovernments, networks have grown organically, meaning that they tend to become tangled,\nwhile software is also often out of date. As a result, hacking weaponry such as\nthe NSA tools dumped on the web in 2017 by the Shadow Brokers (a group whose\nmembers remain totally anonymous) makes it more than easy to infect targets \u2013 despite\nthe fact that patches have long since been made available by software producers\nlike Microsoft to cover the exploited vulnerabilities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s incredible that a tool which was used by intelligence services is now publicly available and so widely used,\u201d complained Vikram Thakur, Director of Security Response at Symantec. Matthew Leibert &#8211; CIO at the city of Allentown, which was hit hard in February last year &#8211; described the malware used to attack his computers as \u201ccommodity malware\u201d, bought on the dark web by cybercriminals who often don\u2019t have a specific target in mind. \u201cThere are warehouses of kids overseas firing off phishing emails,\u201d Mr. Leibert said, comparing the situation with criminals shooting military-grade weapons at random targets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Although EternalBlue does not spread itself by way of email (rather via an outdated version of the SMB net protocol), phishing emails often enough serve as gateways for this and other similar malware to infect systems. That\u2019s why these days it\u2019s absolutely crucial to safeguard your email infrastructure as securely as possible \u2013 for instance using <a href=\"https:\/\/www.retarus.com\/services\/email-security\/\">Retarus Email Security<\/a> including ATP and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.retarus.com\/blog\/en\/patient-zero-detection-retarus-granted-europe-wide-patent\/\">our patented Postdelivery Protection<\/a>. Of course, one always needs to make sure that all software remains totally up to date by installing patches as soon as they have been released and last, but not least, sensitizing users <a href=\"https:\/\/www.retarus.com\/blog\/en\/user-education-tips-email-security\/\">about handling their electronic mail with awareness and good sense<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Update from June 5, 2019: The Baltimore blackmailer has announced via a Twitter account (which has since been suspended) that he did not use EternalBlue, <\/em><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"according to &quot;Ars Technica&quot; (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/information-technology\/2019\/06\/baltimore-ransomware-perp-pinky-swears-he-didnt-use-nsa-exploit\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>according to &#8220;Ars Technica&#8221;<\/em><\/a><em>. The allegation cannot be verified at this stage.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For three weeks now, the computers at Baltimore\u2019s city administration have been held as virtual hostages. They have been infected with ransomware that relies on the \u201cEternalBlue\u201d malware developed by [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":3991,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,15],"tags":[102],"dipi_cpt_category":[],"class_list":["post-3992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-security","tag-email-security"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.7 (Yoast SEO v24.7) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>NSA Tool Cripples US Local Authorities - Retarus Corporate Blog - EN<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.retarus.com\/blog\/en\/nsa-tool-cripples-us-local-authorities\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"NSA Tool Cripples US Local Authorities\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"For three weeks now, the computers at Baltimore\u2019s city administration have been held as virtual hostages. 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