NOW COPS FACE A HACK ATTACK
10,000 computers at Met running on prone XP system Geek saves the day... by accident
A BRITISH tech blogger discovered how to stop the spread of the computer virus that hit the NHS “by accident”.
The ransomware strike infected tens of thousands of computers in nearly 100 countries and hit our hospitals, causing hundreds of ops to be cancelled.
It is only thanks to the efforts of the anonymous geek, 22, who tweets under the name MalwareTech, that the attacks have now been countered.
He told how he had the idea of registering the domain being used by the ransomware, then discovered a “kill switch” had been built into the software and was able to activate it.
Although his actions came too late to help organisations in the UK and Europe, it gave the US enough time to set up defences.
MalwareTech tweeted: “I will confess I was unaware registering the domain would stop the malware until after I registered it, so it was accidental.”
He also urged people to patch their systems to protect themselves in case the cyber-attackers strike again. OUR biggest police force could be wide open to the kind of hack that crippled the NHS.
The Sunday People can reveal that 10,000 of Scotland Yard’s 27,000 computers still run the defunct Windows XP operating system targeted in this week’s cyber attack.
Met chiefs, who have warned staff against opening “suspicious emails” admitted using what critics say is a “dangerously out-of-date system”.
But they insisted they had “a number of layers of industry-leading security, which we have been monitoring over the past 24 hours”.
Our revelation comes as Home Secretary Amber Rudd said 48 of the 248 NHS England trusts were hit and six are still not running as normal.
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has been accused of failing to protect patients and snubbing warnings on vulnerability.
Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth said: “The attack is unprecedented in scale but it is clear our NHS should have been better prepared.”
Last night it was claimed our four nuclear submarines have also used a system based on the out- of- date software. The MoD said: “While we don’t comment on the systems used we have absolute confidence in our nuclear deterrent.”
Experts warned the ransomware virus – which halted car production at Nissan’s Sunderland plant – could get worse as hijacked machines are used to infect other computers.
Europol said it was probing the attack, which hit 130,000 systems in more than 100 countries. Finance chiefs from the G7 yesterday agreed to join forces to tackle future strikes.
Payment demands flashed up on the information boards of German rail operator Deutsche Bahn, while French carmaker Renault stopped production at several sites.
Meanwhile, Home Secretary Amber Rudd has chaired an urgent Cobra meeting. But it emerged the Government was warned of an attack like this only last month.