It’s a “cyberpocalypse” happening on May 13.
A huge cyberextortion attack hit dozens of countries. Computers at hospitals, companies, and government agencies were locked up and a ransom was demanded.
It was believed to the biggest attack of its kind ever recorded.
“We’re actually seeing a cyber-apocalypse play out today. These are some of the things we’ve just been very wary of as an industry. And in the last 24 hours we’ve seen over 45,000 systems get infected with a ransomware across 74 different countries. And effectively what it’s done is it’s locked people out of their computers, hidden and encrypted their data, which they no longer can access until they pay the ransom fee,” said Varun Badhwar, CEO of RedLock.
“This is an unprecedented scale. We’ve never seen something spread this quickly in a 24 hour period across this many countries and continents,” he added.
The malicious software, also called a “ransomware” appeared to exploit a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows.
Britain’s national health service fell victim. Hospitals were forced to close wards and emergency rooms and turn away patients.
Russia appeared to be the hardest hit, according to security experts.
The United States has also been hit, but so far the attack’s effects in the United States do not appear to be widespread.
