A better WannaCry advisory for schools

Sun, 14 May 2017 19:21:02 +1200

The Ministry of Education sent out a very poor advisory to schools about “WannaCry” today, based primarily (from what it seems) on the poor information coming from CERT-NZ. The advisory contains several factual errors, which the Ministry should not be spreading to schools. I’ve written an improved advisory (I’ll update it as required).

(An improved version of an) Urgent message from the Ministry of Education

The weekend media reported on a virus called WannaCry (also WannaCrypt, WanaCrypt0r, WCrypt, and WCRY) that infected many computer systems around the world over the last few days, including very prominent organisations such as the NHS in the UK. It appears that few infections have occured in New Zealand, but it is possible that your school may have been, or may be, at risk. We are writing to let you know what you should do, and what we are doing to protect schools.

Collective Knowledge

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 17:50:58 +1200

Dad asked me today who my teachers were at Pukepoto Primary School, which I could partially answer, with help (I think: Mrs Travers in J1 and J2, Mr Jones in Standard 1, Mrs Bellingham in Standard 2, and Mr Wilkins in Standard 3 and 4, and apparently someone else as a new-entrant). This is an example of knowledge that Google simply can’t give you, of course. Except now it can - or at least will be able to when this page is indexed. When I remember, I’ll try this query again (161 hits at the moment, none of them with the required information, although in eight of the pages the “Tony Meyer” is me) and see if it works. We wondered if Wikipedia would have an entry for Pukepoto School, and while it doesn’t, there is a mention in the entry on Pukepoto (a stub - if I had more knowledge I’d expand it, but I don’t really know what substance I could add).

School on Tony Andrew Meyer

A better WannaCry advisory for schools

(An improved version of an) Urgent message from the Ministry of Education

Collective Knowledge