Security experts say the Wanna Decryptor is exploiting a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows that was leaked last month by an anonymous hacker group calling itself the Shadow Brokers.
Portugal Telecom was also hit by a cyberattack that did not impact its services. NHS Lanarkshire and NHS Western Isles also confirmed they have been affected.
Hospitals across Britain found themselves without access to their computers or phone systems. Many canceled all routine procedures and asked patients not to come to the hospital unless it was an emergency.
In the U.S., FedEx reported that its Windows computers were "experiencing interference" from malware, but wouldn't say if it had been hit by ransomware. Doctors' practices and pharmacies reported similar problems.
"This seems to be a very large scale attack, with earlier reports of infections in Russia, Ukraine, Taiwan, as well as all over Europe", Mounir Hahad, senior director of Cyphort Labs said in a statement. Hospitals, with their often outdated IT systems and trove of confidential patient data, are a particularly tempting target.
The first reports emerged from England, where hospitals across the country were hit by ransomware attacks, in which hackers infect computers with malicious software and demand ransoms to restore access, according to the National Health Service (NHS).
The NHS in the United Kingdom has also been attacked, with at least 15 organisations around the country affected by the attack.
Alan Woodward, visiting professor of computing at the University of Surrey, said there was evidence the ransomware was spreading using a Microsoft flaw exposed in a recent leak of information from USA intelligence agencies.
He said the affected computers likely had not applied the Microsoft patch or were running old operating systems for which no patch was available.
"I don't believe it will have been a targeted attack, but will simply have been that the ransomware has sought out those organizations that are running susceptible devices", he said.
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Tom Griffiths, who was at Bart's Hospital in London for chemotherapy treatment, said a nurse showed him her computer screen, which carried an image of a padlock.
The window includes a countdown clock that threatens the files will be lost permanently in seven days. But there's no evidence so far that patient data has been accessed, NHS Digital said.
Spain's national computer response team, CN-CERT, issued an advisory about the attacks.
Prime Minister Theresa May said the ransomware hit was "not targeted" at the health service but was part of a wider assault on organisations across a number of countries.
"Currently, we have recorded more than 45,000 attacks of the WannaCry ransomware in 74 countries around the world, mostly in Russian Federation", cyber security firm Kaspersky says. As the disruptions rippled through at least 36 hospitals, doctors' offices and ambulance companies across Britain on Friday, the health service declared the attack a "major incident".
"We are aware of a major IT secure system attack".
"The large-scale cyber-attack on our NHS today is a huge wake-up call", said Jamie Graves, chief executive officer of cyber-security company ZoneFox. The National Cyber Security Center said: "We are aware of cyber incident and we are working with NHS Digital and the National Crime Agency to investigate".
The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) is working to support the NHS.
It was not clear who was behind the attacks, but the acts deeply alarmed cybersecurity experts and underscored the enormous vulnerabilities to Internet invasions faced by disjointed networks of computer systems around the world. In 2016, Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in California said it had paid a $17,000 ransom to regain control of its computers from hackers. Other services soon went down - and then, the unidentified NHS worker says, "A bitcoin virus pop-up message had been introduced on to the network asking users to pay $300 to be able to access their PCs".
"Looking at the trends, it was going to happen", he said.
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