‘WANNACRY’ SPREADS AS WORKWEEK STARTS
The worldwide “ransomware” cyberattack spread to thousands of more computers on Monday as people logged in at work, disrupting business, schools, hospitals and daily life, though no new large-scale breakdowns were reported.
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.
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.
The initial attack, known as “WannaCry,” paralyzed computers running factories, banks, government agencies and transport systems in scores of countries, including Russia, Ukraine, Brazil, Spain, India and Japan, among others.
Among those hit were Russia’s Interior Ministry and companies including Spain’s Telefonica and FedEx Corp. in the U.S.
Britain’s National Health Service said about a fifth of NHS trusts — the regional bodies that run hospitals and clinics — were hit by the attack on Friday, leading to thousands of canceled appointments and operations. Seven of the 47 affected trusts were still having IT problems Monday.
The Japan Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center, a nonprofit group providing support in computer attacks, said 2,000 computers at 600 locations in Japan were reported affected.
Companies including Hitachi and Nissan Motor Co. reported problems but said they said it had not seriously affected their business operations.
Chinese state media said 29,372 institutions there had been infected along with hundreds of thousands of devices.
Universities and other educational institutions in China were among the hardest hit, possibly because schools tend to have old computers and be slow to update operating systems and security, said Fang Xingdong, founder of ChinaLabs, an internet strategy think tank.
On social media, students complained about not being able to access their work, and people in various cities said they hadn’t been able to take their driving tests over the weekend because some local traffic police systems were down.
Railway stations, mail delivery, gas stations, hospitals, office buildings, shopping malls and government services also were affected, China’s Xinhua News Agency said, citing the Threat Intelligence Center of Qihoo 360, a Chinese internet security services company.
Elsewhere in Asia, the Indonesian government urged businesses to update computer security after the malware locked patient files on computers in two hospitals in the capital, Jakarta.
Patients arriving at Dharmais Cancer Hospital had to wait several hours while staff worked with paper records.
The attack held users hostage by freezing their computers, popping up a red screen with the words, “Oops, your files have been encrypted!” and demanding money through online bitcoin payment — $300 at first, rising to $600 before it destroys files hours later.
Just one click on an infected attachment or bad link would lead to all computers in a network becoming infected, said Vikram Thakur, technical director of Symantec Security Response.
Experts urged organizations and companies to immediately update older Microsoft operating systems, such as Windows XP, with a patch released by Microsoft Corp. to limit vulnerability to a more powerful version of the malware — or to future versions that can’t be stopped.
Paying ransom will not ensure any fix, said Eiichi Moriya, a cybersecurity expert and professor at Meiji University.
“You are dealing with a criminal,” he said. “It’s like after a robber enters your home. You can change the locks but what has happened cannot be undone. If someone kidnaps your child, you may pay your ransom but there is no guarantee your child will return.”
New variants of the rapidly replicating worm were discovered Sunday. One did not include the so-called kill switch that allowed researchers to interrupt the malware’s spread Friday by diverting it to a dead end on the internet.
Ryan Kalember, senior vice president at Proofpoint Inc. which helped stop its spread, said the version without a kill switch could spread. It was benign because it contained a flaw that prevented it from taking over computers and demanding ransom to unlock files but other more malicious ones will likely pop up.
“We haven’t fully dodged this bullet at all until we’re patched against the vulnerability itself,” Kalember said.