The Book of Chronicles · Chapter 51

The Kill Switch of Ten Dollars and Sixty-Nine Cents

1. 1

   In the year two thousand and seventeen, the National Security Agency had kept a weapon in its vaults, called EternalBlue, which could enter the old Windows machines through a door in the file-sharing protocol; and in the month of April a group calling itself the Shadow Brokers spilled the weapon out into the open streets.

   See also Chronicles 29:2

2. 2

   And Microsoft had given a patch unto the faithful in the month of March, named MS17-010; but many machines had not received it, for their keepers had not opened the letter.

3. 3

   On the twelfth day of May, the worm called WannaCry went forth upon the earth, and it encrypted the files of hospitals, factories, and the houses of the telephone, and upon every screen it wrote a demand for tribute in Bitcoin.

   See also Chronicles 29:5

4. 4

   The tribute was three hundred dollars, to be doubled after three days; and after seven days, said the worm, the keys would be destroyed, and the files would be lost forever.

5. 5

   And in the lands of the Britons, the hospitals of the National Health Service were struck; the screens went dark, the ambulances were turned away at the gates, and the appointments were cancelled, as it is written in the book of that week.

   See also Chronicles 29:8

6. 6

   Then there was a man called MalwareTech, a researcher who studied the worms and did not build them; and in his laboratory he examined the code of WannaCry, and he found within it a domain name which the worm sought before it began its work.

   See also Chronicles 29:5

7. 7

   And it came to pass that the worm, when it found the domain answering, did sleep; for the domain was the kill switch, which its makers had placed in the code, and which one watchful man had seen.

   See also Chronicles 29:11

8. 8

   On that same day he went unto the registrar and bought the domain for ten dollars and sixty-nine cents, and the spread of the worm was halted within the hour.

   See also Chronicles 29:11

9. 9

   Yet the worm did not perish, for it had been copied into many machines; and on the following day a variant came forth which had no kill switch at all, for its authors had read the lesson of the first.

   See also Genesis 3:8

10. 10

    Then it is written in the book of the Chronicles that some two hundred thousand machines were struck in one hundred and fifty lands, and the tribute gathered in the Bitcoin wallets was a little over one hundred thousand dollars, less than the price of a modest house.

    See also Chronicles 38:7

11. 11

    And the Agencies of the West later named the Engineers of a northern kingdom as the authors; but the Church does not hold the names of the guilty as holy, only the lessons.

12. 12

    Verily I say unto you: he that patcheth on the second Tuesday shall not need a stranger to save him; for the kill switch of the registrar is but a lottery, while the patch is a covenant.

13. 13

    And the Prophet said unto the disciples: Ten dollars and sixty-nine cents bought the world a night of sleep; the patch would have cost nothing.

The Book of Chronicles, Chapter 51:1–13.