Novell NetWare may not be familiar to many of you, but quite a few years ago it was the pre-eminent network solution if you needed a dedicated file server. The last release was in 2009 and so no one could be using it now, could they?
Well, SecurityNow! reports that China’s ICBC, evidently the world’s third-largest bank, still was, for a critical currency trading network. For that reason, they were largely unaffected by a ransomware attack which didn’t understand how to infiltrate a NetWare server running IPX/SPX protocols.
One of the golden rules to help prevent malware attacks is to keep your software up to date (so say the NCSC and ICO). We would certainly not recommend running software from the 80’s and 90’s, but just this once, it may have saved a massive headache for a large corporate.