It was responsible for crippling Britain’s hospital network and Germany’s railway, along with other governments and infrastructures worldwide.
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For SMEs backing their systems up on-site, ensuring those systems can’t also be compromised by spreading malware is essential, with businesses advised to keep them disconnected from online computers unless backing up.
FedEx: The company said this weekend it was “experiencing interference with some of our Windows-based systems caused by malware” and was trying to fix the problems as quickly as possible. Companies including Hitachi and Nissan Motor Co. reported problems but said they said had not seriously affected their business operations.
From governments to individuals, there’s plenty of finger-pointing going on following the latest global cyberattack. “At the same time, there needs to be a level of discourse that says, ‘You need to pay real attention to this, and there is a role for you as an average citizen for you to play in securing the systems, ‘” Burley said.
Chinese state media said 29,372 institutions there had been infected along with hundreds of thousands of devices.
The cyberattack that took computer files hostage around the world appeared to slow on Monday as authorities worked to catch the extortionists behind it – a hard task that involves searching for digital clues and following the money.
The cross-border police agency Europol said the situation was “stable”, easing fears that attacks that struck computers in British hospital wards, European vehicle factories and Russian banks would spread further at the start of the working week.
Avivah Litan, a cybersecurity analyst at Gartner, agreed that the government is “is negligent not doing a better job protecting companies”, but added that it’s not like “you can stop the US government from developing cybertools” that then work as intended.
“Right now, just about every IT department has been working all weekend rolling this out”, said Dan Wire, spokesman at Fireeye Security.
Megafon: A spokesperson for Russian telecommunications company Megafon told CNN that the cyberattack affected call centers but not the company’s networks.
“The global attack did affect some of our PCs at Plymouth Hospitals but we can confirm that no clinical systems were infected by the ransomeware and there has been no loss of data”.
Despite warnings from security experts, healthcare breaches continue to occur, signalling a huge risk to delivery of care and patient data.
The US security firm Symantec said the attack appeared to be indiscriminate.
“It is important to note that the vast majority of NHS organisations report that they are running contemporary IT systems, which are commissioned depending on local need”, the NHS said in a statement.
Rudd was speaking after chairing a meeting in Whitehall, London, of the government’s main emergency committee, known as Cobra.
A cybersecurity researcher in Britain managed to slow down its spread by activating the software’s “kill switch”, but there were fears that the cybercriminals would release even more malicious versions. “Our cybercrime teams are now working to retrieve lost data”, Joshua said.
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But some other technology industry executives said privately that it reflected a widely held view in Silicon Valley that the USA government is too willing to jeopardize internet security in order to preserve offensive cyber capabilities.
