The security holes it exploits were disclosed several weeks ago by TheShadowBrokers, a mysterious group that has published what it says are hacking tools used by the NSA as part of its intelligence-gathering.
Earlier, a number of hospitals across England were forced to divert emergency patients after being hit by a suspected cyber attack.
The attack froze computers at hospitals across Britain, shutting down wards, closing emergency rooms and bringing medical treatments to a halt.
Hackers behind the Wanna Decryptor virus, a type of malware, often ask users for money to retrieve access to files they have encrypted. It said the majority of the attacks targeted Russia, Ukraine and Taiwan. "We don't know publicly if it is the NSA (that found the vulnerability) but it is widely assumed it is and that is what Shadow Brokers said", The Guardian quoted Prof. Microsoft released a patch to correct the vulnerability exploited by the tool on March 14. Organisations or individual users who failed to apply that patch to Windows machines may remain vulnerable to WannaCry.
Spain's National Center for the Protection of Critical Infrastructure said it was communicating with more than 100 providers of energy, transportation, telecommunications and financial services about the attack even if basic services had not suffered any disruption.
The chaos in Britain's health system came less than four weeks before a parliamentary election in which national security and the management of the state-run National Health Service (NHS) are important campaign themes.
The British National Health Service said the "major" malware attack impacted 16 of its organizations, and hospitals and clinics in London and northwest and central Britain.
"A number of NHS organisations have reported to NHS Digital that they have been affected by a ransomware attack", NHS Digital said in a statement.
"At this stage we do not have any evidence that patient data has been accessed", the NHS Digital statement said.
Authorities in Britain have been braced for possible cyberattacks in the run-up to the vote, as happened during last year's USA election and on the eve of this month's presidential vote in France. The perpetrators then offer to release the computer files for a price.
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While Russia's police network is said to be tackling the issue too.
"We will continue to work with affected organisations to confirm this".
"The National Cyber Security Centre is working closely with NHS digital to ensure that they support the organisations concerned and that they protect patient safety".
Portugal Telecom and Telefonica Argentina both said they were also targeted.
Global couriering company FedEx said it had also been infected by the ransomware.
The news is also likely to embolden cyber extortionists when selecting targets, Chris Camacho, chief strategy officer with cyber intelligence firm Flashpoint, said. Here's everything you need to know about the cyber attack.
"Affected machines have six hours to pay up and every few hours the ransom goes up", said Kurt Baumgartner, the principal security researcher at security firm Kaspersky Lab.
In Spain, some big firms took pre-emptive steps to thwart ransomware attacks following a warning from Spain's National Cryptology Centre of "a massive ransomware attack". They said the system was down and that they can not transfer anyone till the computer system was back up so he is still in the theatre.
Researchers believe a criminal organization is behind this, given its sophistication.
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