A hacker’s tutorial to gain a command prompt on a target machine was released four days later. But Microsoft had released a patch on March 14, so the attack was restricted to machines running pirated systems and outdated versions of Windows, which are no longer updated. This is bound to recur since the objectives of the computer security community and national security agencies diverge. The success which the WannaCry worm enjoyed in India exposes our continued use of superannuated and pirated Windows operating systems. Strangely, completely free but reliable desktop operating systems have been available for a decade, but organisations still rely on unmaintained Windows software.

Source: Indian Express May 15, 2017 19:32 UTC