Everyone is pointing fingers at someone else when it comes to WannaCrypt, and the blame game has pitted even titans like Microsoft and the NSA against each other.
For all the blame that there is to go around, many in the U.K.cannot overlook how avoidable this was for the National Health Service (NHS).
They ran over a million Windows PCs as of 2014 according to The Register, and the government had agreed to short-term framework support from Microsoft who promised to deliver special security patches for Windows XP, Exchange 2003 and Office 2003.
The problem on the part of the NHS was that they did not enforce the use of these patches.Seven months into the agreement, as many as 18 NHS trusts had yet to utilize them.
In 2015 when so many organizations had yet to take advantage and it was time to renew the agreement, the CCS elected not to renew support for a second year.
This led to insufferably avoidable vulnerabilities that WannaCry has exploited.
British National Health Service
There are four organizations that Britons commonly blame for even just the rampant outbreak of WannaCrypt's new iteration, WannaCry.
Some point fingers at Microsoft who, of course, created the Windows operating system and, thereby, inadvertently made what would become a breeding ground for WannaCry.
Others place the NHS in front of the firing squad out of frustration with 61 of its organizations subverted by the worm. Others still blame the NSA for haphazardly allowing the criminal hacker group, Shadow Brokers, to simply abscond with its sophisticated hackware and code.
More blame end-users for still even using unprotected Windows PCs and basically deciding to be the ones who bring back Polio refusing to be vaccinated.
The Register reported last night that, though Microsoft complained about NSA exploit stockpiles over the weekend, the multinational tech giant had been hypocritically harboring its own stockpile of patches, which presents a ready-made compromise of the operating system.
Wannacrypt targets unpatched Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008.Any systems older than those are at least as susceptible.