the virus first appeared in Ukraine then it spread around the world ATMs shut down and Kiev workers at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant manually monitored radiation when their computers failed and soon cyber specialists for companies around the world joined the scramble to contain it from Russia's state oil giant Rosneft Danish shipping conglomerate mask u.s. drug company Merck to India's largest container port in Mumbai the Australian Government has confirmed reports companies there were hit - we have been in contact with the National Cyber Security Center in the United Kingdom with our intelligence counterparts in the US
and with other organizations in Canada and New Zealand every infected computer carried the same message if you see this text it said your files are no longer accessible because they've been encrypted the message then demands payment to recover the data the ransomware virus is the latest cyber attack using hacking tools that experts widely believed was stolen from the US National Security Agency and posted online in April it's similar to last month's wanna cry virus that infected more than three hundred thousand computers in more than 150 countries it also took control of computers and demanded a
digital ransom but there are differences last time around there was a method that disabled the software there's a web domain that it find home - that's not the case here they using an email address to correspond with the victims and that address has been blocked so at the moment the reports are coming in suggesting that even if you go against advice and you try to pay the rents and you can't get through so it's a fiasco from the perspective of the hackers as well as from the victims this attack draws attention to concerns that even
after recent highly publicized cyber attacks governments and corporations are still vulnerable do most probable cause is that operating system the software of the companies that are targeted were not up to date and then there were some security vulnerabilities into this software it seems nothing can stop this at the moment is there are so many attack vectors there are so many mechanisms for slipping past various sorts of Defense's really it tells us that they all fashion quite boring things like backup really serious backup that you actually check now looks like the last line of defense just
who was behind this attack is unclear and cyber security experts are still trying to figure out the extent of the damage but it shows that hackers are as able as ever to stay one step ahead of the game million ohand al-jazeera
