Rob Wainwright, Director of Europol, the European Union's police agency, said at least 200,000 victims were affected.
He said: "We need to get to the bottom of why the Government thought cyber-attacks were not a risk, when a combination of warnings and plain common sense should have told ministers that there is a growing and risky threat to our cyber security".
Researchers with Czech Republic-based security software maker Avast said 60 per cent of infected computers were located in Russian Federation, followed by Ukraine and Taiwan.
Cyber-security experts said the malicious software works by exploiting a flaw in Microsoft software that was described in NSA documents stolen from the agency and leaked publicly in April by a criminal group called Shadow Brokers.
The biggest ever ransomware attacks that started on Friday have wrecked havoc across globe, crippling computers and demanding hundreds of dollars from the users before they could regain control. And it has potential to create much more damage because it's likely to be lurking on computers in offices around the world that haven't been used since Friday. In Russia, where a wide array of systems came under attack, officials said services had been restored or the virus contained.
"For so many organisations in the same day to be hit, this is unprecedented", he said.
Last night, she said: "The concern is that on Monday morning the appointment system may not be working, some places may not be able to access routine results, even the phone lines in some cases may not be working".
Russia's largest bank Sberbank said its systems "detected in time attempts to penetrate bank infrastructure".
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Germany's rail operator Deutsche Bahn said its station display panels were affected.
The East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust was "experiencing significant problems with our telephone network", it said in an online statement.
The researcher, who uses the Twitter handle @malwaretechblog, told CNNTech they registered the domain name in order to study the virus, but it turned out the ransomware needed it to remain unregistered to keep spreading. It said less than 1% of computers were affected, and that the virus was now "localized" and being destroyed.
But @MalwareTechBlog warned that the "crisis isn't over" as those behind it "can always change the code and try again".
Payment is demanded within three days or the price is doubled, and if none is received within seven days the locked files will be deleted, according to the screen message.
"Ransomware becomes particularly nasty when it infects institutions like hospitals, where it can put people's lives in danger", said Kroustek, the Avast analyst.
The cyber attacks started Friday and spread rapidly around the globe using a security flaw in Microsoft's Windows XP operating system, an older version that is no longer given mainstream tech support by the United States giant.
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