Many hospitals and other public services which are still using outdated version of Windows get hacked. The staff has found locked down computers with message that their files has been encrypted and if they pay 300$ in bitcoin to specified address computer will be unlocked.
This has caused lot's of problems to hospitals because they were not able to get to patients files. Diagnosis along with treatments had to be postponed. Hospitals claims that lives has not been in danger. Many hospitals where they still kept paper documentation continued to operate in semi functional way.
Cui bono (who benefits)
Most of the hospitals are now claming that they will be upgrading from Windows XP to to latest version of windows. Which in turn will generate milions if not bilions of profit for Microsoft. The fact that this "top of the range cyber weapon" is believed to be stolen from NSA by "hackers" sounds suspicious.
Microsoft has long history of dirty sales and marketing tricks. Of course they have never been accused of something as criminal as hacking. On the other hand Microsoft as a huge global corporation has been in bed with goverments all over the world.
Let me know what you think about this. I will be covering soon another sinister move by Microsoft which is the introduction of Windows 10 S. This has nothing to do with criminal cyber atack but usual Microsoft shady sales tactics.