Security Experts Work to Contain Fallout From Cyberattacks<br />It is still fundamentally robbery and extortion." While American companies like FedEx said they had been hit by the attack, experts said<br />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.<br />I would expect them to do that." The severity of the attacks in developing countries like Russia, China<br />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.<br />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<br />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.<br />Security firms said the attacks had spread to more than 74 countries, with Russia being the worst hit, followed by Ukraine, India<br />and Taiwan, said Kaspersky Lab, a Russian cybersecurity firm.<br />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<br />and other institutions in scores of countries hit by what was described as the largest ransomware attack on record.<br />The Chinese online security company Qihoo 360 issued a warning about the virus, saying<br />that many networks there had been hit and that some computers used to mine Bitcoin in China were among those infected.
