On Friday, a version of the WannaCry ransomware hit tens of thousands of computers in 74 countries worldwide in a matter of hours, according to Kaspersky researchers. According to Britain's Independent newspaper, these attacks may stretch around the globe, from Portugal to Turkey, Indonesia, Vietnam, Japan, Germany and Russian Federation. When asked to confirm that Wana Decryptor has struck in the USA, and at what scale, Acting Deputy Press Secretary Scott McConnell did not provide specifics.
EternalBlue was made public on 14 April, and while Microsoft had fixed the problem a month prior to its leak, it appeared many high-profile targets had not updated their systems to stay secure.
In the United States, FedEx acknowledged it had been hit by malware and was "implementing remediation steps as quickly as possible". "We regret any inconvenience to our customers".
Hospitals and doctors' surgeries in parts of England were forced to turn away patients and cancel appointments.
Hospitals in areas across Britain found themselves without access to their computers or phone systems.
Many hospitals cancelled all routine procedures and warned patients not to come to hospital unless it was an emergency. Some chemotherapy patients were even sent home because their records could not be accessed.
Several facilities in Scotland also reported being hit.
This second vector generally shouldn't be a concern for home users, as the Windows file sharing port is blocked by nearly all ISPs and is turned off by default on current Windows for home users, but it is a critical problem for businesses. But early evidence suggests it was neither deliberately targeted against hospitals nor aimed at health data.
"Organizations are beginning to fully appreciate their exposure to risk, whether from negligent or malicious insiders, the growing attack surface are represented by the Internet of Things, or from the growing number of sophisticated attackers", Douglas said.
Authorities in both countries said the attack was conducted using "ransomware" - malicious software that infects machines, locks them up by encrypting data and demands a ransom to restore access.
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But Alan Woodward, visiting professor of computing at the University of Surrey, said he did not believe it was a targeted attack. Critics cannot say the USA government didn't disclose in time to mitigate damage for all those who can patch their systems.
"Our focus is on supporting organisations to manage the incident swiftly and decisively, but we will continue to communicate with NHS colleagues and will share more information as it becomes available", NHS Digital said.
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.
Mrs May said: "This is not targeted at the NHS, it's an global attack and a number of countries and organisations have been affected".
"We are aware that a number of NHS organisations have reported that they have suffered from a ransomware attack".
The US Department of Homeland Security's computer emergency response team said it was aware of ransomware infections "in several countries around the world".
Ransomware is a rapidly accelerating problem, driven by the presence of a payment network, Bitcoin, that is unregulated by design. wCry is just the latest in a now large family of attackers and it may signal that it is time to start thinking seriously about beginning a government effort to disrupt Bitcoin if we want to address the ransomware problem.
The Spanish government said several companies including Telefonica had been targeted in ransomware cyberattack that affected the Windows operating system of employees' computers.
East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust, which runs four hospitals north of London, said in a statement: "Immediately on discovery of the problem, the trust acted to protect its IT systems by shutting them down; it also meant that the trust's telephone system is not able to accept incoming calls".
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