White Papers

Dell EMC Technical White Paper
1 Introduction
In 2017, there was a cyberattack by a crypto ransomware worm named WannaCry. This worm targeted
systems with Microsoft Windows OS. WannaCry encrypted the files on the target computers and demanded
ransom to decrypt them. The vulnerability that WannaCry exploits lies in the Windows implementation of the
CIFS/SMBv1 protocol. Exploiting this protocol, the WannaCry ransomware pushed specifically crafted
executable messages on the targets and execute code to encrypt the files. Though Microsoft released a patch
for it, WannaCry infected many systems because the patch was not applied in time.
Because iDRAC includes additional security checks, it was not impacted by the WannaCry attack.
However, as a security enhancement, Dell EMC is deprecating the CIFS/ SMBv1 protocol. Going forward,
only the SMB2 protocol is supported. With this change, users need to have network shares with SMB2
protocol support when using iDRAC. Although SMBv1/CIFS protocol can still be kept enabled on the shares,
it is not recommended.