Essays Tagged "Foreign Affairs"

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Why the NSA Makes Us More Vulnerable to Cyberattacks

The Lessons of WannaCry

  • Bruce Schneier
  • Foreign Affairs
  • May 30, 2017

There is plenty of blame to go around for the WannaCry ransomware that spread throughout the Internet earlier this month, disrupting work at hospitals, factories, businesses, and universities. First, there are the writers of the malicious software, which blocks victims’ access to their computers until they pay a fee. Then there are the users who didn’t install the Windows security patch that would have prevented an attack. A small portion of the blame falls on Microsoft, which wrote the insecure code in the first place. One could certainly condemn the Shadow Brokers, a group of hackers with links to Russia who …

Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.