Global ransomware attack appears to slow in US

It has been reported that a new ransomware "WannaCry" is spreading widely, RBI advisory to the banks said.

The full extent of the damage from the cyberattack felt in 150 countries was unclear and could worsen if more malicious variations of the online extortion scheme appear. In Russia, the mobile phone provider MegaFon, Sberbank, and Ministry of the Interior became the next victim.

In China, state media said more than 29,000 institutions there had been infected along with hundreds of thousands of devices. They added that said no sensitive data was compromised and that the malware did not breach the government's cyber defences as the infected computers were standalone machines.

The second hit was registered by the French carmaker Renault, in Europe.

Microsoft on Friday released a security update for Windows XP that fixes an SMB v1 hole that has been recently used to spread ransomware via phishing attacks.

The NSA releases 90 to 95 percent of the software vulnerabilities it discovers, he said, but it sits on the rest for use in hacking and spying activities. Patients have had to be turned away because their records were inaccessible. Given the current regulatory environment, it's the responsibility of these companies themselves, with their enormous financial resources, to track down these gaps in the security of their products, paying to acquire information if necessary.

Here are some of the key players in the attack and what may — or may not — be their fault.

Microsoft pushed out additional emergency patches for older systems - including machines running Windows XP, which hadn't received an update since 2014 - to combat the global attack.

"It's no longer a cost of doing business", said R. David Edelman, who advised President Barack Obama on technology. "It's like after a robber enters your home". "There is also no guarantee that your files will be released back to you".

The use of that domain is being called a "kill switch" in the malware. That means it spreads over networks from one computer to another, encrypting files and demanding money as it goes. He said the software attacking a vulnerability had been incorporated with other software and delivered in a way to cause "infection, encryption and locking".

In Britain, whose health service was among the first high-profile targets of the attack on Friday, some hospitals and doctors' offices were still struggling to recover.

"That's what makes this more troubling than ransomware was a week ago", Thakur said.

He noted that Microsoft is calling for a "Digital Geneva Convention" that would require governments to report computer vulnerabilities to vendors rather than store, sell or exploit them.

"The numbers are still going up", Wainwright said.

Part of the blame for this weekend's attack lies with computer users and IT managers who haven't upgraded their system.

Microsoft is now warning that the government practice of "stockpiling" software vulnerabilities so that they can be used as weapons is a misguided tactic that weakens security for everybody. Known as WannaCry, this strain of ransomware was developed by as-yet unknown hackers using tools first developed by the NSA and affects some computers running Microsoft software.