Security Experts Work to Contain Fallout From Cyberattacks

Security Experts Work to Contain Fallout From Cyberattacks
It is still fundamentally robbery and extortion." While American companies like FedEx said they had been hit by the attack, experts said
that people in the United States had so far been less affected than others worldwide after a British cybersecurity researcher accidentally stopped the current ransomware attack from spreading more widely.
I would expect them to do that." The severity of the attacks in developing countries like Russia, China
and India also highlighted the problem of illegally copied software, which tends to be more vulnerable to malware like the one that spread globally on Friday and Saturday.
Yet, when the 22-year-old British researcher, who confirmed his involvement but insisted on anonymity because he did not want the public scrutiny, saw
that the kill switch’s domain name — a long and complicated set of letters — had yet to be registered, he bought it himself, accidentally shutting down the hacking attack before it could fully spread to the United States.
Security firms said the attacks had spread to more than 74 countries, with Russia being the worst hit, followed by Ukraine, India
and Taiwan, said Kaspersky Lab, a Russian cybersecurity firm.
The malicious software, transmitted via email and stolen from the National Security Agency, exposed the vulnerability of computer systems at government agencies, universities, health care systems
and other institutions in scores of countries hit by what was described as the largest ransomware attack on record.
The Chinese online security company Qihoo 360 issued a warning about the virus, saying
that many networks there had been hit and that some computers used to mine Bitcoin in China were among those infected.