Bart's Health, which runs several London hospitals, said it had activated its major incident plan, cancelling routine appointments and diverting ambulances to neighboring hospitals. The ransomware is automatically scanning for computers it can infect whenever it loads itself onto a new machine. But computers and networks that didn't update their systems remained at risk.
NEW YORK (AP) - Dozens of countries were hit with a huge cyberextortion attack Friday that locked up computers and held users' files for ransom at a multitude of hospitals, companies and government agencies.
In a tweet, Europol Director Rob Wainwright said the cyberattack on British health care institutions "follows trend from USA of ransomware attacks on health care trusts".
The malware, using a technique purportedly stolen from the U.S. National Security Agency, stopped care in hospitals across the United Kingdom, affected Russia's Ministry of Interior and infected company computer systems in countries from Eastern Europe to the U.S. and Asia. English hospitals and a Spanish telecom seemed to be hardest hit.
All told, several cybersecurity firms said they had identified the malicious software in upward of 60 countries, including the United States, though its effects in the USA did not appear to be widespread, at least in the initial hours.
Pictures posted on social media showed screens of NHS computers with images demanding payment of $300 worth of the online currency Bitcoin, saying: "Ooops, your files have been encrypted!"
Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at the Helsinki-based cybersecurity company F-Secure, called it "the biggest ransomware outbreak in history".
"The investigation is at an early stage but we believe the malware variant is Wanna Decryptor", NHS Digital, the computer arm of the English health service, said in a statement.
Some experts said the threat had receded for now, in part because a British-based researcher, who declined to give his name, registered a domain that he noticed the malware was trying to connect to, limiting the worm's spread.
"For so many organizations in the same day to be hit, this is unprecedented", Wysopal said.
The security holes it exploits were disclosed several weeks ago by TheShadowBrokers, a mysterious group that has published what it says are hacking tools used by the NSA.
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Hackers can still gain easy access to personal computers that lack a security update issued in March by Microsoft Corp.to fix the vulnerability in its Windows operating system.
"Currently, we have recorded more than 45,000 attacks of the WannaCry ransomware in 74 countries around the world, mostly in Russian Federation".
NHS Digital said the attack "was not specifically targeted at the NHS and is affecting organizations from across a range of sectors".
Hospitals across Britain found themselves without access to their computers or phone systems. There were no reported problems in Scotland or Wales.
Patrick Ward, a 47-year-old sales director, said his heart operation, scheduled for Friday, was canceled at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London. Just ask the patients of the 16 hospitals in England whose delay in care could have been easily avoided.
The attack hit Britain's health service, forcing affected hospitals to close wards and emergency rooms. Authorities said they were communicating with more than 100 energy, transportation, telecommunications and financial services providers about the attack.
Cyber security experts scrambled Saturday to contain the impact of an unprecedented global cyber-attack that hit Russia's banks, British hospitals, FedEx and European auto factories.
The ransomware attack was indeed a large campaign, and it did manage to cause havoc worldwide.
Victims who opened the attachment in the email were served with the ransomware, which takes over the computer, security researchers said.
Krishna Chinthapalli, a doctor at Britain's National Hospital for Neurology & Neurosurgery who wrote a paper on cybersecurity for the British Medical Journal, said many British hospitals still use Windows XP software, introduced in 2001. "I find it everywhere", says Dillon, adding that WannaCry, too, "is going to be on networks for years".
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