Rep. Lieu asks NSA to stop Petya, WannaCry if it can

Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., has called on the National Security Agency (NSA) to release any kill switches or protective services that could help mitigate the cyberattacks launched using NSA-created malicious tools that are in the wild.

The request was sent in a letter to NSA Director Admiral Michael S. Rogers  the day after a second major ransomware attack was launched that utilized the NSA tools, which were released publicly by the hacktivist group the Shadow  Brokers.

“My first and urgent request is that if the NSA knows how to stop this global malware attack, or has information that can help stop the attack, then NSA should immediately disclose it.  If the NSA has a kill switch for this new malware attack, the NSA should deploy it now,” Lieu wrote.

He also requested that the NSA tell companies like Microsoft when they spot a major vulnerability in one of their products.

While WannaCry specifically leveraged the exploit known as EternalBlue, Petya (or NotPetya) takes advantage of both EternalBlue and EternalRomance, a separate remote code execution Windows exploit.