Britain's National Health Service said hospitals were hit by an apparent "ransomware" attack, but there was no immediate evidence that patient data had been accessed.
A spokesman for British Prime Minister Theresa May said she was being kept informed of the incident, which came less than four weeks before a parliamentary election in which national security and the management of the state-run National Health Service (NHS) are important campaign themes.
"The investigation is at an early stage, but we believe the malware variant is Wanna Decryptor", NHS Digital said in a media release.
Apart from United Kingdom hospitals, the attack has also hit Spain's largest telecom company, Telefonica, and Portugal Telecom.
A spokesman for NHS Dumfries and Galloway said: "The position for Dumfries and Galloway is that we have had three practices affected at the very outset of the cyber attack".
More than half of Scotland's health boards have been affected by a large-scale cyber attack on NHS computer systems.
Most of the affected hospitals were in England, but several facilities in Scotland also reported being hit.
The news is also likely to embolden cyber extortionists when selecting targets, Chris Camacho, chief strategy officer with cyber intelligence firm Flashpoint, said.
Hospitals affected are believed to have lost the use of phone lines and computers, with some diverting all but emergency patients elsewhere.
The attack, circulated via email, corrupted accounts with "ransomware" files that locked users out of their computers.
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NHS England described the incident as a "ransomware" attack.
Staff were forced to revert to pen and paper and use their own mobiles after the attack affected key systems, including telephones.
"Our society increasingly relies on interconnected systems to deliver key services such as health", he said.
"The IT systems of NHS sites were reportedly bombarded by pop-up messages Friday demanding such a ransom, and purported screenshots showed the cyber attacker asking for "$300 worth of bitcoin" - a form of digital currency - to be sent to a certain online address.
Hackers "repeat exercises they regard as a success", he said, noting that software to carry out ransomware attacks is increasingly sophisticated and available as a commodity though the Dark Web.
Outlets are reporting that more than a dozen countries - and as many as 74, according to one security firm - have been affected by the hacking tool.
"Our emergency surgeries are running doors open, we can access our software but ransomware window pops up every 20-30 seconds so we are slow", writes @fendifille in a post about the attack.
Digital, said the attack was still "ongoing" and that that the organization was "made aware of it this afternoon", according to an interview in The New York Times.
"Effected machines have six hours to pay up, and every few hours the ransom goes up", said Kurt Baumgartner, the principal security researcher at Kaspersky Lab.
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