{"id":307927,"date":"2017-05-13T04:51:37","date_gmt":"2017-05-13T03:51:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/massive-ransomware-infection-hits-computers-in-99-countries\/"},"modified":"2017-05-13T04:51:37","modified_gmt":"2017-05-13T03:51:37","slug":"massive-ransomware-infection-hits-computers-in-99-countries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/massive-ransomware-infection-hits-computers-in-99-countries\/","title":{"rendered":"Massive Ransomware Infection Hits Computers in 99 Countries"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A massive cyber-attack using tools believed to have been developed by the US National Security Agency has struck organisations around the world.<\/p>\n

Computers in thousands of locations have been locked by a programme that demands $300 (\u00a3230) in Bitcoin.<\/p>\n

In April hackers known as The Shadow Brokers claimed to have stolen the tools and released them online.<\/p>\n

Microsoft released a patch for the vulnerability in March, but many systems may not have been updated.<\/p>\n

How big is the attack?<\/strong><\/p>\n

There have been reports of infections in 99 countries, including the UK, US, China, Russia, Spain, Italy and Taiwan.<\/p>\n

Cyber-security firm Avast said it had seen 75,000 cases of the ransomware – known as WannaCry and variants of that name – around the world.<\/p>\n

“This is huge,” said Jakub Kroustek at Avast<\/p>\n

Many researchers say the incidents appear to be linked, but say it may not be a coordinated attack on specific targets.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile wallets for the digital cryptocurrency Bitcoin that were seemingly associated with the ransomware were reported to have started filling up with cash.<\/p>\n

Who has been affected?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) has been hit<\/a>\u00a0and screenshots of the WannaCry program were shared by NHS staff.<\/p>\n

Hospitals and doctors’ surgeries were forced to turn away patients and cancel appointments. One NHS worker told the BBC that patients would “almost certainly suffer” as a result.<\/p>\n

Some reports said Russia had seen more infections than any other single country. Russia’s interior ministry…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A massive cyber-attack using tools believed to have been developed by the US National Security Agency has struck organisations around the world. Computers in thousands of locations have been locked by a programme that demands $300 (\u00a3230) in Bitcoin. In April hackers known as The Shadow Brokers claimed to have stolen the tools and released […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2520,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-307927","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2520"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307927\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}