International hunt to find the culprits of attack

DOZENS of countries have been hit by the extortion attack, which locked computers and held users’ files for ransom. It is believed to be the biggest of its kind ever recorded, disrupting services in up to 100 nations, including the UK, the US, Russia, Ukraine, Spain and India.

Europol, the European Union’s police agency, said the onslaught was at “an unprecedented level and will require a complex international investigation to identify the culprits”.

The ransomware appeared to exploit a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows that was purportedly identified by the US National Security Agency (NSA) for its own intelligence-gathering purposes and was later leaked to the internet.

It was not yet known who perpetrated Friday’s attacks. Two security firms – Kaspersky Lab and Avast – said they had identified the malicious software behind the attack in over 70 countries, although both said the attack had hit Russia the hardest.

The Russian interior ministry, which runs the country’s police, confirmed it was among those that fell victim to the “ransomware”, which typically flashes a message demanding a payment to release the user’s own data.

Spokeswoman Irina Volk was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying the problem had been “localised” and that no information was compromised.

Russia’s central bank said it had seen no incidents “compromising the data resources of bank institutions”, state news agency Tass reported. The national railway system said that although it was attacked, rail operations were unaffected.

In the US, FedEx reported that its Windows computers were “experiencing interference” from malware, but would not say if it had been hit by ransomware.

Elsewhere in Europe, the attack hit companies including Spain’s Telefonica, a global broadband and telecommunications company.

Germany’s Deutsche Bahn said that departure and arrival display screens at its train stations were affected, but there was no impact on actual train services.