Microsoft says stockpiling of hacking tools by governments partly to blame for recent attack
Microsoft’s President and Chief Legal Officer has come out today blaming governments’ stockpiling of hacking tools as part of the reason for the recent hack that affected the NHS. WannaCrypt, the ransomware that has hit hundreds of thousands of systems in recent days was crafted based on an exploit developed by the National Security Agency (NSA).
Microsoft President, Brad Smith, said:
The governments of the world should treat this attack as a wake-up call. They need to take a different approach and adhere in cyber space to the same rules applied to weapons in the physical world. We need governments to consider the damage to civilians that comes from hoarding these vulnerabilities and the use of these exploits.
