Microsoft partly blames United States government for global cyberattack

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If NHS simply updated their operating systems and ensured that their security was up-to-date, they could have prevented themselves from being a target of the attack.

In March, the company released a free patch that would have protected computers from the malware.

"There are other criminals who've launched this attack, and they are ultimately responsible for this", he said.

"Most of the Indian organisations are still vulnerable to the attacks since the sophistication of these cyber threats is going up and many of Indian organisations including private and public sector still use outdated operating systems which make it easy for the cyber attackers to compromise the systems", he added.

Those hit by WannaCry also failed to heed warnings previous year from Microsoft to disable a file sharing feature in Windows known as SMB, which a covert hacker group calling itself Shadow Brokers had claimed was used by NSA intelligence operatives to sneak into Windows PCs.

As security researcher Kevin Beaumont pointed out, the NSA's Eternal Blue exploit that WannaCry attackers used to spread the ransomware once inside a network can not be used to infect Windows XP machines on that network.

"Clearly people who run supported versions of Windows and patched quickly were not affected", Trustwave's Mador said.

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The ransomware mixes copycat software loaded with amateur coding mistakes and recently leaked spy tools widely believed to have been stolen from the US National Security Agency, creating a vastly potent class of crimeware. The company is crunching data to arrive at a firmer estimate it aims to release later Thursday.

Russia's largest bank Sberbank said late last week it had been attacked by a virus attack but that viruses had not got into its systems.

While the security experts have struggled to find the so-called "patient zero" in the attack, they have been more successful in finding the cause of the attacks and the reason why it was so successful. Companies needing to restore their operations right away likely would have turned to backups, if available, by now.

WannaCry takes advantage of a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows.

The cyberattack on Friday involved a ransomware virus called WannaCry, which affected over 150 countries and 200,000 organizations, including the NHS, FedEx, and the Portugal Telecom.

These factors help explain the mystery of why such a tiny number of victims appear to have paid ransoms into the three bitcoin accounts to which WannaCry directs victims. Major institutions like universities and corporations are under threat for large scale security breaches due to the virus.

WannaCry landed nine weeks after Microsoft's patch arrived.

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