Cyberattack on European, UK institutions
A massive “ransomware” cyber attack on Friday targeted a number of organisations across Europe, including Britain’s state-run health service and Spain’s biggest telecommunications firm.
There were also reports of infections from Italy, Portugal, Russia and Ukraine. Computer systems were infected by cyber criminals with malicious software called ransomware, which locks up computers and demands a ransom to restore access.
Screenshots of a well-known programme that locks computers and demands a payment in Bitcoin were shared online by parties claiming to be affected, BBC reported. It was not yet clear if the attacks were all connected.
“This is a major cyber attack, impacting organisations across Europe at a scale I’ve never seen before,” said security architect Kevin Beaumont. A cyber-security researcher tweeted he had detected 36,000 instances of the ransomware, called WannaCry and variants of that name.
In Britain, hospitals and doctors’ surgeries were forced to turn away patients and cancel appointments after the nationwide cyber attack crippled some computer systems of the staterun National Health Service.
The NHS said 16 organisations were affected but the service itself was not specifically targeted. No patient data was believed to have been accessed during the cyber attack but it was unclear if the incident had impacted emergency cases.
“The investigation is at an early stage but we believe the malware variant is Wanna Decryptor,” NHS Digital, the computer arm of the health service, said. “This attack was not specifically targeted at the NHS and is affecting organisations from across a range of sectors.”
The National Cyber Security Centre, part of the GCHQ spy agency, said it was investigating the cyber attack.