"Athena/Hera" CIA Spying Prog. Leaked-All Versions Windows Affected

Steve C said:

How is this infection propagated? What's the counter to these state sponsored tools (if any)? At least I have Kaspersky antivirus which is implied to be tough to hide from :)

I had this curiosity too, and spent some time searching for an answer. Which was surprisingly tough.

But the common thought from several sources was that it is propagated the old fashioned way: someone clicks on an unknown attachment.
They only need one user on one computer on the network to do it, then they are in.

World population - 7,000 million.
US population - 350 million.

QED - 95% of us do not care - LOL.

Ghost82 said:

Is possible that Microsoft knew all this? Genuinely asking.

No, Microsoft was annoyed that the NSA was "stockpiling exploits" instead of disclosing the vulnerabilities to them, so that Microsoft could fix the problems.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/14/microsoft_to_spooks_wannacrypt_was_inevitable_quit_hoarding/ said:

Microsoft is not pleased, and in this post, renews its call for a “Digital Geneva Convention”, and its long-standing demand that governments disclose vulnerabilities to vendors instead of stockpiling them.“An equivalent scenario with conventional weapons would be the U.S. military having some of its Tomahawk missiles stolen,” writes Brad Smith, Redmond president and legal boss.
Noting the “unintended but disconcerting” link between nation-state activity and criminal activity, Smith adds that governments need “to consider the damage to civilians that comes from hoarding these vulnerabilities and the use of these exploits”. The “Digital Geneva Convention” Redmond recommends would therefore require governments “to report vulnerabilities to vendors, rather than stockpile, sell, or exploit them”.

Steve C said:

I fully expect the national security agencies to deploy sophisticated 'cyberwar' tools to defeat the bad guys. Problems arise when the tools are leaked.

You are missing my point....Have you personally been affected?

A moot point.....M$ release a patch two months before the "CRY" Ransomeware started infecting.
Am I suggesting collusion or an exchange of information between the NSA the CIA and M$.....you can draw your own conclusion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks said:

On 7 March 2017, WikiLeaks started publishing content code-named "Vault 7". In a series of tweets and a Facebook Live + Periscope press conference, WikiLeaks announced these documents contain CIA internal documentation of their "massive arsenal" of hacking tools including malware, viruses trojects, weaponised "zero day" exploits and remote control systems to name a few.

Of course this was not only CIA, but NSA, FBI and GCHQ sourced materials, as other journalistic sources, such as the BBC reported at the time.

Not surprisingly, Microsoft acted to safeguard Windows systems, based on the leaked information regarding Microsoft product vulnerabilities.

No doubt there were angry exchanges between Redmond and Washington DC.

Exchange of Information, no doubt, but hardly collusion. You don't collude with thieves who have stolen your intellectual property to the detriment of your customers using your products, however highly placed those thieves may have been.

Fisher Mann said:

What worries me is if they can do it, there has to be scores of others around the globe who can figure how to do the same code and maliciously attack innocent people and institutions around the world.

It is regrettably a fact of life, that you sometimes need to use un-democratic means to protect democracy e.g. XPD.