Most IT specialists tend to avoid mixing water with computers, but Russia pulled out their biggest gun this week to combat the WannaCry ransomware attack targeted Microsoft Windows systems. Orthodox Church’s Patriarch Kirill went to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and sprayed holy water on the computers. It could be a new approach to stopping malware. If you trigger an electrical failure with water, the malware is technically stopped with the now dead computer.
Kirill, a close ally of Vladimir Putin, made headlines previously with the curious by blaming the rise of the Islamic State not on religious extremism but “godless, secular” influences. That’s right, the problem with ISIS is that they are too secular.
Patriarch of Russian Orthodox church making sure that the Ministry of Internal Affairs computers won’t get affected by WannaCry virus attack
The use of holy water raises some interesting questions since computers post-dated such religious traditions. Does a blessing function like malware (we can call it holyware) where it replicates itself throughout a network so blessing one computer will eventually spread throughout the world?
There is a long-standing belief in faith healing and miracles from blessings, though that has tended to be with humans as are subjects like Lazarus. This is the first time that I recall the use of such powers on a computer network. The Patriarch Patch on a Microsoft Windows system appears to avoid the need for any re-coding and simply makes God your IT specialist. If nothing else, the Russian Orthodox Church could create a million on bumper stickers reading “God is my Coder.”