Microsoft had made fixes for older systems, such as 2001's Windows XP, available only to mostly larger organizations, including Britain's National Health Service, that paid extra for extended technical support. "Known as WannaCry or Wanna Decryptor, the so-called ransomware programme homes in on vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows systems", the daily said.
The Opposition Liberal Democrat and Labour parties have both demanded an inquiry into the cyber-attack. Users have to pay a ransom fee within a set period of time. But the patches won't do any good for machines that have already been hit. The attack seems to have first appeared around 2 a.m. ET Friday in Europe, said Kurt Baumgartner, a principal security researcher with Kaspersky Lab in Moscow.
Two security firms Kaspersky Lab and Avast said they had identified the malware behind the attack in upward of 70 countries, although both said the attack has hit Russian Federation hardest. Rudd said 97 percent of the trusts of National Health Service (NHS) were now "working as normal". The NHS has said hospitals have had to cancel some outpatient appointments because of the attack.
Here's everything you need to know so far. As with other Windows 10 updates , this will be free for existing Windows 10 users. Honestly, everybody wants to eat Pushbullet's lunch these days. It is a Cortana-based feature and under the "Pick Up Where You Left" feature, users can continue their work on a number of devices, including, Android, iOS and Windows.
The Ministry of Energy, Tourism and Digital Agenda says the attack Friday affected the Windows operating system of employees' computers in several companies. "IT managers need to be extremely aware that new variants of this ransomware attack are being launched nearly hourly, so they can't just check that their computer systems are protected, then relax, assuming everything will stay that way", he said.
South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported a university hospital had been affected, while a communications official in Indonesia said two hospitals there had been affected. British Prime Minister Theresa May said there was no evidence patient data had been compromised and added that the attack had not specifically targeted the National Health Service.
