“The U.S. government is better suited to react and respond to something like this than some other countries because of years of work between the private sector and the government.”

Cybersecurity experts believe the attack was carried out with the help of tools first developed by the U.S. National Security Agency for targeting terrorists and foreign adversaries, which was leaked to the public by a hacker group called The Shadow Brokers in April. Also badly hit was Britain's National Health Service, which declared a "major incident" after the attack, which forced some hospitals to divert ambulances and scrap operations. Spain’s computer response team CCN-CERT has also warned of a "massive attack" from the ransomware strain, amid reports that local telecommunications firm Telefonica was hit. The ransomware appeared to exploit a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows that was purportedly identified by the US National Security Agency (NSA) for its own intelligence-gathering purposes and was later leaked to the internet. “A few machines will be infected, then it’ll try to contact more.”

Security firm Avast said it had detected more than 75,000 attacks in 99 countries, with Russia, Ukraine and Taiwan among the hardest-hit countries.
A ransomware cyberattack continues to infect computers of private and public organisations around the world, and demand payment in bitcoin. The method used by the program, EternalBlue, was originally developed by the National Security Agency to exploit a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows, and was leaked by The Shadow Brokers in April.