British hospitals, Spanish firms among targets of huge cyberattack

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Authorities said they were communicating with more than 100 energy, transportation, telecommunications and financial services providers about the attack.

"We are implementing remediation steps as quickly as possible", it said in a statement.

Europol has said the wave of cyber attacks wreaking havoc across the globe is "at an unprecedented level".

Still, only a small number of US-headquartered organisations were hit because the hackers appear to have begun the campaign by targeting organisations in Europe, said Vikram Thakur, research manager with security software maker Symantec.

Forcepoint Security Labs said that "a major malicious email campaign" consisting of almost five million emails per hour was spreading the new ransomware.

At least 75,000 cases have been reported so far, Internet Security major Avast said.

Kaspersky Lab, a cybersecurity company, estimated that around 45,000 attacks were carried out in 74 countries.

Alan Woodward, a visiting professor of computing at the University of Surrey, said that attacks attacked the same problem that is Microsoft vulnerability.

The UK's state-run National Health Service declared a "major incident" after the attack, which forced some hospitals to divert ambulances and scrap operations, while in Spain several major companies including telecom giant Telefonica were hit with employees told to shut down workstations immediately through megaphone announcements.

Spanish telco giant Telefonica and United States delivery service FedEx were among the businesses affected.

Pundits have suggested that the WannaCry malware spreads via a worm and has the ability to move around a network by itself, exploiting vulnerabilities inside a system upon entering it.

"This is one of the largest global ransomware attacks the cyber community has ever seen", said Rich Barger, director of threat research with Splunk, one of the firms that linked WannaCry to the NSA. The tool, which was leaked by a group known as Shadow Brokers, had been stolen from the N.S.A.as part of a wide swath of tools illegally released in 2016.

Microsoft said it was pushing out automatic Windows updates to defend clients from WannaCry. It issued a patch on March 14 to protect them from Eternal Blue. It said the company was working with its customers to provide additional assistance.

"We have been affected", a spokeswoman told AFP, saying they were assessing the situation to try to find a solution.

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At least 16 organizations connected to the National Health Service in England and an unknown number in Scotland reported being affected.

"(The virus) feels random in terms of where it's gone to and where it's been opened", she said. He told CNN it appeared as if they had been deleted. "They said the system was down and that they can not transfer anyone till the computer system was back up", Brennan said.

Ransomware attacks are on the rise around the world.

Ransomware is malicious software that infects machines, locks them by encrypting data and then attempts to extort money to let users back in.

On Friday, Russia's interior and emergencies ministries, as well as its biggest bank, Sberbank, said they were targeted.

In Russia, the Interior Ministry said around 1,000 computers were hit by a cyber attack on Friday.

Rudd said the government did not know if the attack was directed by a foreign government.

Several companies in Spain were also crippled by ransomware attacks.

Chris Wysopal of the software security firm Veracode said criminal organizations were probably behind the attack, given how quickly the malware spread.

In a statement, it said the attacks will "require a complex worldwide investigation to identify the culprits".

When the ransomware takes over a computer, the attackers are pretty explicit in their demands, Segura said.

Hospitals across Britain found themselves without access to their computers or phone systems.

"The investigation is at an early stage but we believe the malware variant is Wanna Decryptor", officials at NHS Digital said in a statement.

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