The Jim Bakker Show

Bitcoin’s murkier rivals line up to displace it as cybercriminals’ favourite

FILE PHOTO: A Bitcoin (virtual currency) paper wallet with QR codes and a coin are seen in an illustration picture taken in Paris, France May 27, 2015. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier/File Photo

By Jemima Kelly

LONDON (Reuters) – Bitcoin is well-entrenched as the preferred payment for cybercriminals like the WannaCry hackers who have hit more than 300,000 computers over the past week, but cryptocurrencies offering more anonymity are threatening to displace it.

A key reason for bitcoin’s dominance in the nefarious online underworld, say technologists and cybercrime experts, is its size – the total value of all bitcoins in circulation is more than twice that of the nearest of hundreds of rivals.

That makes it easy for victims to access enough to pay the ransoms demanded, and for hackers to cash out of it via online exchanges to spend money in the real world.

Bitcoin was set up in 2008 by someone – or some group – calling themselves Satoshi Nakamoto, and was the first digital currency to successfully use cryptography to keep transactions secure and hidden, making traditional financial regulation difficult if not impossible.

Money is sent from one anonymous online “wallet” to another with no need for a third party to validate or clear the transactions.

In the WannaCry attack, the addresses of three anonymous bitcoin wallets were given to victims, with a demand for ransom payments from $300 worth of bitcoin, with a promise the affected machines would be decrypted in return, a promise that no evidence has shown will be kept.

But since the way that Bitcoin functions is via the blockchain – a giant, virtually tamper-proof, shared ledger of all bitcoin transactions ever made – payments can be traced, if users do not have the sophistication to take further steps to cloak themselves using digital anonymity tools.

“In the initial days of bitcoin, people…didn’t realise they were recording for posterity on the blockchain every financial transaction that ever took place,” said Emin Gun Sirer, a computer science professor at Cornell University.

Bitcoin addresses are anonymous, but users can be traced through IP addresses or by analysing money flows.

If criminals using bitcoin want to stay truly anonymous, Gun Sirer said, they have to go through a number of additional, complex steps to make sure they do not get caught.

It is not yet clear what level of sophistication the WannaCry hackers have when it comes to laundering their cryptocurrency, as none of the money has yet been moved out of the three bitcoin wallets linked to the ransomware, which have had over $80,000 worth of bitcoin paid into them so far. [http://tmsnrt.rs/2rqaLyz]

But some have suggested that the fact that the WannaCry hackers demanded bitcoin shows how amateur they are.

“If it was me, I would want people to use bitcoin all day, because you can trace it,” said Luke Wilson, vice president for law enforcement at Elliptic, a London-based security firm that tracks illicit bitcoin transactions and that counts the U.S. Federal Bureau for Investigations (FBI) among its clients.

Wilson, who used to work at the FBI, where he set up a taskforce to investigate the use of virtual currencies, did not disclose all the ways that Elliptic and law enforcement agencies find criminals using bitcoin. But sometimes, he said, the offenders make as obvious a mistake as withdrawing money from a bitcoin wallet directly into their bank accounts.

CAT-AND-MOUSE GAME

More sophisticated criminals use obfuscation methods that make it very hard to be tracked down. One of the most basic ones is a technique known as “chain-hopping”, whereby money is moved from one cryptocurrency into another, across digital currency exchanges – the less-regulated the better – to create a money trail that is almost impossible to track.

Newer and more complex money-laundering methods have also emerged in recent years, which make it very difficult for law enforcement and bitcoin security firms such as Elliptic or New-York-based Chainalysis to track down cybercriminals.

“It’s a cat-and-mouse game – as police and companies like Elliptic catch up to criminals’ techniques, they invent new techniques,” said Jerry Brito, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Coin Center, a not-for-profit advocacy group focusing on public policy issues around cryptocurrency.

These techniques are not foolproof, however – chain-hopping, for example, relies on unregulated exchanges that do not carry out know-your-customer (KYC) checks, and security firms say they will develop ways to trace such methods.

MONERO HACK

Easier, perhaps, would be for cybercriminals to use next-generation cryptocurrencies that have built-in anonymity from the start, such as Monero, Dash and Z-Cash.

And indeed, experts said late on Tuesday that a computer virus that exploits the same vulnerability as the WannaCry attack had latched on to more than 200,000 computers and begun using them to manufacture – or “mine” – Monero currency.

But with a total value of around $425 million – a little over 1 percent of that of bitcoin – converting that currency into spendable cash might not be so easy, and it is also much harder for victims to access, alternative payments experts said.

That is why the Monero attack did not demand a ransom, but rather used the infected computers’ computing power to create new currency.

“This used to happen in bitcoin before it became big – there were loads of botnets that went into computers that used to mine bitcoin, but you now can’t basically mine bitcoin on normal computers because you need specialist hardware,” said Chainalysis CEO Jonathan Levin.

Levin said such bitcoin-based attacks were carried out several years ago, when mining it was still largely a hobby for tech geeks using their home computers.

As the bitcoin price has risen and as transaction numbers have grown, the computers have become so specialized that only they can only perform the function of bitcoin mining.

“If Monero does become adopted and is as big and liquid (as bitcoin), that means the crime (will) move from using computers to mine to getting to extortion,” Levin said.

French researchers find last-ditch cure to unlock WannaCry files

A hooded man holds a laptop computer as blue screen with an exclamation mark is projected on him in this illustration picture taken on May 13, 2017. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/Illustration

By Eric Auchard

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – French researchers said on Friday they had found a last-chance way for technicians to save Windows files encrypted by WannaCry, racing against a deadline as the ransomware threatens to start locking up victims’ computers first infected a week ago.

WannaCry, which started to sweep round the globe last Friday and has infected more than 300,000 computers in 150 nations, threatens to lock out victims who have not paid a sum of $300 to $600 within one week of infection.

A loose-knit team of security researchers scattered across the globe said they had collaborated to develop a workaround to unlock the encryption key for files hit in the global attack, which several independent security researchers have confirmed.

The researchers warned that their solution would only work in certain conditions, namely if computers had not been rebooted since becoming infected and if victims applied the fix before WannaCry carried out its threat to lock their files permanently.

The group includes Adrien Guinet, who works as a security expert, Matthieu Suiche, who is an internationally known hacker, and Benjamin Delpy, who helped out by night, in his spare time, outside his day job at the Banque de France.

Suiche has published a blog with technical details summarizing what the group of passing online acquaintances has developed. He links to a tool called Wannakey built by Guinet, the creator of the original concept.

“THE ONLY WORKABLE SOLUTION”

Guinet, a security researcher at Paris-based Quarks Lab, published the basic technique for decrypting WannaCry files on Thursday, which Delpy then figured out how to turn into a practical tool to salvage files.

Suiche, based in the United Arab Emirates and one of the world’s top security researchers, provided advice and testing to ensure the fix worked across all various versions of Windows.

Wannakey was quickly tested and shown to work on Windows 7 and older Windows versions XP and 2003, Suiche said, adding that he believes the hastily developed fix also works with Windows 2008 and Vista.

“(The method) should work with any operating system from XP to Win7,” Suiche told Reuters via direct message on Twitter.

“This is not a perfect solution. But this is so far the only workable solution to help enterprises to recover their files if they have been infected and have no back-ups,” Suiche said of network back-up and retrieval systems which allow users with infected computers to restore them after re-imaging their PCs.

Classic customer help desk procedures typically advise users reporting computer problems to reboot their machines, but fast-acting users who pulled the plug on their PCs or otherwise did not attempt to repair them can benefit, the researchers said.

(Editing by Maria Sheahan and Gareth Jones)

U.S. cyber bill would shift power away from spy agency

An undated aerial handout photo shows the National Security Agency (NSA) headquarters building in Fort Meade, Maryland. NSA/Handout via REUTERS

By Joel Schectman

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A bill proposed in Congress on Wednesday would require the U.S. National Security Agency to inform representatives of other government agencies about security holes it finds in software like the one that allowed last week’s “ransomware” attacks.

Under former President Barack Obama, the government created a similar inter-agency review, but it was not required by law and was administered by the NSA itself.

The new bill would mandate a review when a government agency discovers a security hole in a computer product and does not want to alert the manufacturer because it hopes to use the flaw to spy on rivals. It also calls for the review process to be chaired by the defense-oriented Department of Homeland Security rather than the NSA, which spends 90 percent of its budget on offensive capabilities and spying.

Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Democratic Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii introduced the legislation in the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

“Striking the balance between U.S. national security and general cyber security is critical, but it’s not easy,” said Senator Schatz in a statement. “This bill strikes that balance.”

Tech companies have long criticized the practice of withholding information about software flaws so they can be used by government intelligence agencies for attacks.

Hackers attacked 200,000 in more than 150 countries last week using a Microsoft Windows software vulnerability that had been developed by the NSA and later leaked online.

Microsoft President Brad Smith harshly criticized government practices on security flaws in the wake of the ransomware attacks. “Repeatedly, exploits in the hands of governments have leaked into the public domain and caused widespread damage,” Smith wrote in a blog post.

Agencies like the NSA often have greater incentives to exploit any security holes they find for spying, instead of helping companies protect customers, cyber security experts say.

“Do you get to listen to the Chinese politburo chatting and get credit from the president?” said Richard Clayton a cyber-security researcher at the University of Cambridge. “Or do you notify the public to help defend everyone else and get less kudos?”

Susan Landau, a cyber security policy expert at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, said that in putting DHS in charge of the process, the new bill was an effort to put the process “into civilian control.”

The new committee’s meetings would still be secret. But once a year it would issue a public version of a secret annual report.

The NSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting by Joel Schectman; Editing by Jonathan Weber and David Gregorio)

Hackers mint crypto-currency with technique in global ‘ransomware’ attack

By Joseph Menn

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – A computer virus that exploits the same vulnerability as the global “ransomware” attack has latched on to more than 200,000 computers and begun manufacturing digital currency, experts said Tuesday.

The development adds to the dangers exposed by the WannaCry ransomware and provides another piece of evidence that a North Korea-linked hacking group may be behind the attacks.

WannaCry, developed in part with hacking techniques that were either stolen or leaked from the U.S. National Security Agency, has infected more than 300,000 computers since Friday, locking up their data and demanding a ransom payment to release it.

Researchers at security firm Proofpoint said the related attack, which installs a currency “miner” that generates digital cash, began infecting machines in late April or early May but had not been previously discovered because it allows computers to operate while creating the digital cash in the background.

Proofpoint executive Ryan Kalember said the authors may have earned more than $1 million, far more than has been generated by the WannaCry attack.

Like WannaCry, the program attacks via a flaw in Microsoft Corp’s <MSFT.O> Windows software. That hole has been patched in newer versions of Windows, though not all companies and individuals have installed the patches.

Digital currencies based on a technology known as blockchain operate by enabling the creation of new currency in exchange for solving complex math problems. Digital “miners” run specially configured computers to solve the problems and generate currency, whose value ultimate fluctuates according to market demand.

Bitcoin is by far the largest such currency, but the new mining program is not aimed at Bitcoin. Rather it targeted a newer digital currency, called Monero, that experts say has been pursued recently by North Korean-linked hackers.

North Korea has attracted attention in the WannaCry case for a number of reasons, including the fact that early versions of the WannaCry code used some programming lines that had previously been spotted in attacks by Lazarus Group, a hacking group associated with North Korea.

Security researchers and U.S. intelligence officials have cautioned that such evidence is not conclusive, and the investigation is in its early stages.

In early April, security firm Kaspersky Lab said that a wing of Lazarus devoted to financial gain had installed software to mine Monero on a server in Europe.

A new campaign to mine the same currency, using the same Windows weakness as WannaCry, could be coincidence, or it could suggest that North Korea was responsible for both the ransomware and the currency mining.

Kalember said he believes the similarities in the European case, WannaCry and the miner were “more than coincidence.”

“It’s a really strong overlap,” he said. “It’s not like you see Monero miners all over the world.”

The North Korean mission to the United Nations could not be reached for comment, while the FBI declined to comment.

(Fixes spelling of digital currency in paragraphs 11 and 14 to Monero not Moreno.)

(Reporting by Joseph Menn; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Cynthia Osterman)

Jim Bakker: The Lord Told Me President Trump’s Life Is in Danger – Charisma

During the same podcast interview with Charisma Media founder Steve Strang in which he discussed the WannaCry ransomware attack is an end-times event, Jim Bakker shared that he sometimes feels alone in his calls to pray for President Donald Trump.

But another word he received from the Lord has added to his urgency.

“There is going to be an attempt on our president’s life very soon,” he said. “We need to pray for the protection of our president.”

Bakker said the president’s election last November was a miracle, and “the adversary is so angry because they expected to win.” They’re not going to give up until they destroy him, he added.

Researchers say global cyber attack similar to North Korean hacks

A screenshot shows a WannaCry ransomware demand, provided by cyber security firm Symantec, in Mountain View, California, U.S. May 15, 2017. Courtesy of Symantec/Handout via REUTERS

By Ju-min Park and Dustin Volz

SEOUL/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Cybersecurity researchers have found evidence they say could link North Korea with the WannaCry cyber attack that has infected more than 300,000 computers worldwide, as global authorities scrambled to prevent hackers from spreading new versions of the virus.

A researcher from South Korea’s Hauri Labs said on Tuesday their own findings matched those of Symantec <SYMC.O> and Kaspersky Lab, who said on Monday that some code in an earlier version of the WannaCry software had also appeared in programs used by the Lazarus Group, identified by some researchers as a North Korea-run hacking operation.

“It is similar to North Korea’s backdoor malicious codes,” said Simon Choi, a senior researcher with Hauri who has done extensive research into North Korea’s hacking capabilities and advises South Korean police and National Intelligence Service.

Both Symantec and Kaspersky said it was too early to tell whether North Korea was involved in the attacks, based on the evidence that was published on Twitter by Google security researcher Neel Mehta.

The attacks, which slowed on Monday, are among the fastest-spreading extortion campaigns on record.

In China, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said she had no information to share, when asked about the origin of the attack and whether North Korea might be connected.

Several Asian countries have been affected by the malware, although the impact has not been as widespread as some had feared.

In Malaysia, cybersecurity firm LE Global Services said it identified 12 cases so far, including a large government-linked corporation, a government-linked investment firm and an insurance company. It did not name any of the entities.

“We may not see the real picture yet, as companies are not mandated to disclose security breaches to authorities in Malaysia,” said LE Global CEO Fong Choong Fook.

“The real situation may be serious. In one of the cases, the attack was traced back to early April.”

Vietnam’s state media said on Tuesday more than 200 computers had been affected.

Taiwan Power Co. <TAIWP.UL> said that nearly 800 of its computers were affected, although these were used for administration, not for systems involved in electricity generation.

EXPERTS URGE CAUTION

FireEye Inc <FEYE.O>, another large cyber security firm, said it was also investigating, but it was cautious about drawing a link to North Korea.

“The similarities we see between malware linked to that group and WannaCry are not unique enough to be strongly suggestive of a common operator,” FireEye researcher John Miller said.

U.S. and European security officials told Reuters on condition of anonymity that it was too early to say who might be behind the attacks, but they did not rule out North Korea as a suspect.

The Lazarus hackers, acting for impoverished North Korea, have been more brazen in their pursuit of financial gain than others, and have been blamed for the theft of $81 million from the Bangladesh central bank, according to some cyber security firms. The United States accused it of being behind a cyber attack on Sony Pictures in 2014.

An official at South Korea’s Korea Internet & Security Agency said on Tuesday the agency was sharing information with intelligence officials on recent cases reported for damages but was not in position to investigate the source of the attack.

The official declined to comment on intelligence-related matters.

A South Korean police official that handles investigations into hacking and cyber breaches said he was aware of reports on the North Korean link, but said police were not investigating yet.

Victims haven’t requested investigations but they want their systems to be restored, the official said.

North Korea has denied being behind the Sony and banking attacks. North Korean officials were not immediately available for comment and its state media has been quiet about the matter.

Hauri researcher Choi said the code bore similarities with those allegedly used by North Korean hackers in the Sony and bank heists. He said based on his conversations with North Korean hackers, the reclusive state had been developing and testing ransomware programs since August.

In one case, alleged hackers from North Korea demanded bitcoin in exchange for client information they had stolen from a South Korean shopping mall, Choi added.

The North Korean mission to the United Nations was not immediately available for comment on Monday.

While the attacks have raised concerns for cyber authorities and end-users worldwide, they have helped cybersecurity stocks as investors bet governments and corporations will spend more to upgrade their defenses.

Cisco Systems <CSCO.O> closed up 2.3 percent on Monday and was the second-biggest gainer in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

(Additional reporting by Jess Macy Yu in Taipei, My Pham in Hanoi, Michael Martina in Beijing and Liz Lee in Kuala Lumpur; Writing by Jeremy Wagstaff in Singapore; Editing by Sam Holmes, Michael Perry and Mike Collett-White)

Ukraine imposes sanctions on Russian web firms, citing cyber threat

A Yandex taxi is seen in central Kiev, Ukraine, May 16, 2017. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich

By Natalia Zinets

KIEV (Reuters) – Ukraine imposed sanctions on Russia’s largest internet group Yandex and other popular online firms on Tuesday, saying it wanted to guard against cyber attacks, and the Kremlin threatened retaliation.

The restrictions froze any assets held by the Russian businesses inside Ukraine and banned hosts there from linking to them, though the websites were all still accessible in Kiev on Tuesday afternoon.

The ban was imposed partly to protect against companies “whose activities threaten the information and cyber security of Ukraine”, the Kiev government’s Security and Defence Council said in a statement.

They added to a list of more than 400 Russian firms blacklisted by Kiev since Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the ensuing pro-Russian separatist uprising in eastern Ukraine.

Mail.ru Group, which owns the Odnoklassniki social network and Vkontakte, Russia’s version of Facebook, said that around 25 million Ukrainians could be affected by the “politically motivated” decision.

“We have never been involved in politics. We have not broken a single law of Ukraine,” it said in a statement. It said the Ukrainian market contributed an “immaterial” amount of revenue and so Mail.ru would not revise its financial plans.

Yandex declined comment and there was no immediate comment from other companies on the list.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists that Moscow had not forgotten the principle of reciprocity when it came to such disputes, calling the move “short-sighted.”

Many of the affected sites are hugely popular in Ukraine.

Vkontakte was the second-most visited website in Ukraine as of March, according to data cited by the Ukrainian Internet Association. Yandex, Odnoklassniki and Mail.ru were also in the top five most popular sites that month.

In comments to Russian newspaper Kommersant, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova called the sanctions a “manifestation of politically motivated censorship”.

Moscow has repeatedly denied accusations from Kiev that it has been waging a “cyber war” on Ukraine at the same time as it fuels Ukraine’s separatist conflict by supporting rebels with troops and weapons.

Ukraine has also accused Russian computer hackers of targeting its power grid, financial system and other infrastructure with viruses.

(Additional reporting by Maria Kiselyova and Anastasia Teterevleva in Moscow; writing by Alessandra Prentice; editing by Matthias Williams and Mark Heinrich)

Oddities in WannaCry ransomware puzzle cybersecurity researchers

Cables and computers are seen inside a data centre at an office in the heart of the financial district in London, Britain May 15, 2017. REUTERS/Dylan Martinez

By Jeremy Wagstaff

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – The WannaCry malware that spread to more than 100 countries in a few hours is throwing up several surprises for cybersecurity researchers, including how it gained its initial foothold, how it spread so fast and why the hackers are not making much money from it.

Some researchers have found evidence they say could link North Korea with the attack, but others are more cautious, saying that the first step is shedding light on even the most basic questions about the malware itself.

For one thing, said IBM Security’s Caleb Barlow, researchers are still unsure exactly how the malware spread in the first place. Most cybersecurity companies have blamed phishing e-mails – e-mails containing malicious attachments or links to files – that download the ransomware.

That’s how most ransomware finds its way onto victims’ computers.

The problem in the WannaCry case is that despite digging through the company’s database of more than 1 billion e-mails dating back to March 1, Barlow’s team could find none linked to the attack.

“Once one victim inside a network is infected it propagates,” Boston-based Barlow said in a phone interview, describing a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows that allows the worm to move from one computer to another.

The NSA used the Microsoft flaw to build a hacking tool codenamed EternalBlue that ended up in the hands of a mysterious group called the Shadow Brokers, which then published that and other such tools online.

But the puzzle is how the first person in each network was infected with the worm. “It’s statistically very unusual that we’d scan and find no indicators,” Barlow said.

Other researchers agree. “Right now there is no clear indication of the first compromise for WannaCry,” said Budiman Tsjin of RSA Security, a part of Dell.

Knowing how malware infects and spreads is key to being able to stop existing attacks and anticipate new ones. “How the hell did this get on there, and could this be repeatedly used again?” said Barlow.

PALTRY RANSOM

Some cybersecurity companies, however, say they’ve found a few samples of the phishing e-mails. FireEye said it was aware customers had used its reports to successfully identify some associated with the attack.

But the company agrees that the malware relied less on phishing e-mails than other attacks. Once a certain number of infections was established, it was able to use the Microsoft vulnerability to propagate without their help.

There are other surprises, that suggest this is not an ordinary ransomware attack.

Only paltry sums were collected by the hackers, according to available evidence, mostly in the bitcoin cryptocurrency.

There were only three bitcoin wallets and the campaign has far earned only $50,000 or so, despite the widespread infections. Barlow said that single payments in some other ransomware cases were more than that, depending on the victim.

Jonathan Levin of Chainalysis, which monitors bitcoin payments, said there were other differences compared to most ransomware campaigns: for instance the lack of sophisticated methods used in previous cases to convince victims to pay up. In the past, this has included hot lines in various languages.

And so far, Levin said, the bitcoin that had been paid into the attackers’ wallets remained there – compared to another campaign, known as Locky, which made $15 million while regularly emptying the bitcoin wallets.

“They really aren’t set up well to handle their bitcoin payments,” Levin said.

The lack of sophistication may bolster those cybersecurity researchers who say they have found evidence that could link North Korea to the attack.

A senior researcher from South Korea’s Hauri Labs, Simon Choi, said on Tuesday the reclusive state had been developing and testing ransomware programs only since August. In one case, the hackers demanded bitcoin in exchange for client information they had stolen from a South Korean shopping mall.

Choi, who has done extensive research into North Korea’s hacking capabilities, said his findings matched those of Symantec and Kaspersky Lab, who say some code in an earlier version of the WannaCry software had also appeared in programs used by the Lazarus Group, identified by some researchers as a North Korea-run hacking operation.

The Lazarus hackers have however been more brazen in their pursuit of financial gain than others, and have been blamed for the theft of $81 million from the Bangladesh central bank, according to some cybersecurity firms. The United States accused it of being behind a cyber attack on Sony Pictures in 2014.

Whoever is found to be behind the attack, said Marin Ivezic, a cybersecurity partner at PwC in Hong Kong, the way the hackers used freely available tools so effectively may be what makes this campaign more worrying.

By bundling a tool farmed from the leaked NSA files with their own ransomware, “they achieved better distribution than anything they could have achieved in a traditional way” he said.

“EternalBlue (the hacking tool) has now demonstrated the ROI (return on investment) of the right sort of worm and this will become the focus of research for cybercriminals,” Ivezic said.

(Additional reporting Ju-Min Park in Seoul, Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

More disruptions feared from cyber attack; Microsoft slams government secrecy

Indonesia's Minister of Communications and Information, Rudiantara, speaks to journalists during a press conference about the recent cyber attack, at a cafe in Jakarta, Indonesia

By Dustin Volz and Eric Auchard

WASHINGTON/FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Officials across the globe scrambled over the weekend to catch the culprits behind a massive ransomware worm that disrupted operations at car factories, hospitals, shops and schools, while Microsoft on Sunday pinned blame on the U.S. government for not disclosing more software vulnerabilities.

Cyber security experts said the spread of the worm dubbed WannaCry – “ransomware” that locked up more than 200,000 computers in more than 150 countries – had slowed but that the respite might only be brief amid fears new versions of the worm will strike.

In a blog post on Sunday, Microsoft President Brad Smith appeared to tacitly acknowledge what researchers had already widely concluded: The ransomware attack leveraged a hacking tool, built by the U.S. National Security Agency, that leaked online in April.

“This is an emerging pattern in 2017,” Smith wrote. “We have seen vulnerabilities stored by the CIA show up on WikiLeaks, and now this vulnerability stolen from the NSA has affected customers around the world.”

He also poured fuel on a long-running debate over how government intelligence services should balance their desire to keep software flaws secret – in order to conduct espionage and cyber warfare – against sharing those flaws with technology companies to better secure the internet.

“This attack provides yet another example of why the stockpiling of vulnerabilities by governments is such a problem,” Smith wrote. He added that governments around the world should “treat this attack as a wake-up call” and “consider the damage to civilians that comes from hoarding these vulnerabilities and the use of these exploits.”

The NSA and White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the Microsoft statement.

Economic experts offered differing views on how much the attack, and associated computer outages, would cost businesses and governments.

The non-profit U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit research institute estimated that total losses would range in the hundreds of millions of dollars, but not exceed $1 billion.

Most victims were quickly able to recover infected systems with backups, said the group’s chief economist, Scott Borg.

California-based cyber risk modeling firm Cyence put the total economic damage at $4 billion, citing costs associated with businesses interruption.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday night ordered his homeland security adviser, Tom Bossert, to convene an “emergency meeting” to assess the threat posed by the global attack, a senior administration official told Reuters.

Senior U.S. security officials held another meeting in the White House Situation Room on Saturday, and the FBI and the NSA were working to help mitigate damage and identify the perpetrators of the massive cyber attack, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

The investigations into the attack were in the early stages, however, and attribution for cyber attacks is notoriously difficult.

The original attack lost momentum late on Friday after a security researcher took control of a server connected to the outbreak, which crippled a feature that caused the malware to rapidly spread across infected networks.

Infected computers appear to largely be out-of-date devices that organizations deemed not worth the price of upgrading or, in some cases, machines involved in manufacturing or hospital functions that proved too difficult to patch without possibly disrupting crucial operations, security experts said.

Microsoft released patches last month and on Friday to fix a vulnerability that allowed the worm to spread across networks, a rare and powerful feature that caused infections to surge on Friday.

Code for exploiting that bug, which is known as “Eternal Blue,” was released on the internet last month by a hacking group known as the Shadow Brokers.

The head of the European Union police agency said on Sunday the cyber assault hit 200,000 victims in at least 150 countries and that number would grow when people return to work on Monday.

MONDAY MORNING RUSH?

Monday was expected to be a busy day, especially in Asia, which may not have seen the worst of the impact yet, as companies and organizations turned on their computers.

“Expect to hear a lot more about this tomorrow morning when users are back in their offices and might fall for phishing emails” or other as yet unconfirmed ways the worm may propagate, said Christian Karam, a Singapore-based security researcher.

The attack hit organizations of all sizes.

Renault said it halted manufacturing at plants in France and Romania to prevent the spread of ransomware.

Other victims include is a Nissan manufacturing plant in Sunderland, northeast England, hundreds of hospitals and clinics in the British National Health Service, German rail operator Deutsche Bahn and international shipper FedEx Corp

A Jakarta hospital said on Sunday that the cyber attack had infected 400 computers, disrupting the registration of patients and finding records.

Account addresses hard-coded into the malicious WannaCry virus appear to show the attackers had received just under $32,500 in anonymous bitcoin currency as of (1100 GMT) 7 a.m. EDT on Sunday, but that amount could rise as more victims rush to pay ransoms of $300 or more.

The threat receded over the weekend after a British-based researcher, who declined to give his name but tweets under the profile @MalwareTechBlog, said he stumbled on a way to at least temporarily limit the worm’s spread by registering a web address to which he noticed the malware was trying to connect.

Security experts said his move bought precious time for organizations seeking to block the attacks.

(Additional reporting by Jim Finkle, Neil Jerome Morales, Masayuki Kitano, Kiyoshi Takenaka, Jose Rodriguez, Elizabeth Piper, Emmanuel Jarry, Orathai Sriring, Jemima Kelly, Alistair Smout, Andrea Shalal, Jack Stubbs, Antonella Cinelli, Kate Holton, Andy Bruce, Michael Holden, David Milliken, Tim Hepher, Luiza Ilie, Patricia Rua, Axel Bugge, Sabine Siebold, Eric Walsh, Engen Tham, Fransiska Nangoy, Soyoung Kim, Mai Nguyen and Nick Zieminski; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Peter Cooney)

China hit by cyber virus, Europe warns of more attacks

By Cate Cadell and Guy Faulconbridge

BEIJING/LONDON (Reuters) – The WannaCry “ransomware” cyber attack hobbled Chinese traffic police and schools on Monday as it rolled into Asia for the new work week, while authorities in Europe said they were trying to prevent hackers from spreading new versions of the virus.

In Britain, where the virus first raised global alarm when it caused hospitals to divert ambulances on Friday, it gained traction as a political issue just weeks before a general election. The opposition Labour Party accused the Conservative government of leaving the National Health Service vulnerable.

Shares in firms that provide cyber security services rose with the prospect that companies and governments would have to spend more money on defenses.

Some victims were ignoring official advice and paying the $300 ransom demanded by the cyber criminals to unlock their computers, which was due to double to $600 on Monday for computers hit by Friday’s first wave.

Brian Lord, managing director of cyber and technology at cybersecurity firm PGI, said victims had told him “the customer service provided by the criminals is second to none”, with helpful advice on how to pay: “One customer said they actually forgot they were being robbed.”

Although the virus’s spread was curbed over the weekend in most of the world, France, where carmaker Renault was among the world’s highest profile victims, said more attacks were likely.

“We should expect similar attacks regularly in the coming days and weeks,” said Giullaume Poupard, head of French government cyber security agency ANSSI. “Attackers update their software … other attackers will learn from the method and will carry out attacks.”

Companies and governments spent the weekend upgrading software to limit the spread of the virus. Monday was the first big test for Asia, where offices had already mostly been closed for the weekend before the attack first arrived.

British media were hailing as a hero a 22-year-old computer security whiz who appeared to have helped stop the attack from spreading by discovering a “kill switch” – an internet address which halted the virus when activated.

SPREAD SLOWING

China appeared over the weekend to have been particularly vulnerable, raising worries about how well the world’s second largest economy would cope when it opened for business on Monday. However, officials and security firms said the spread was starting to slow.

“The growth rate of infected institutions on Monday has slowed significantly compared to the previous two days,” said Chinese Internet security company Qihoo 360. “Previous concerns of a wide-scale infection of domestic institutions did not eventuate.”

Qihoo had previously said the attack had infected close to 30,000 organizations by Saturday evening, more than 4,000 of which were educational institutions.

The virus hit computers running older versions of Microsoft software that had not been recently updated. Microsoft released patches last month and on Friday to fix a vulnerability that allowed the worm to spread across networks.

In a blog post on Sunday, Microsoft & President Brad Smith appeared to tacitly acknowledge what researchers had already widely concluded: the attack made use of a hacking tool built by the U.S. National Security Agency that had leaked online in April.

Infected computers appear to largely be out-of-date devices that organizations deemed not worth the price of upgrading. Some have also been machines involved in manufacturing or hospital functions, difficult to patch without disrupting operations.

“The government’s response has been chaotic, to be frank,” the British Labour Party’s health spokesman Jon Ashworth said. “They’ve complacently dismissed warnings which experts, we now understand, have made in recent weeks.”

“The truth is, if you’re going to cut infrastructure budgets and if you’re not going to allow the NHS to invest in upgrading its IT, then you are going to leave hospitals wide open to this sort of attack.”

Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) is the world’s fifth largest employer after the U.S. and Chinese militaries, Walmart and McDonald’s. The government says that under a previous Labour administration the trusts that run local hospitals were given responsibility to manage their own computer systems.

WARNINGS GIVEN

Asked if the government had ignored warnings over the NHS being at risk from cyber attack, Prime Minister Theresa May told Sky News: “No. It was clear [that] warnings were given to hospital trusts.”

An official from Cybersecurity Administration China (CAC) told local media on Monday that while the ransomware was still spreading and had affected industry and government computer systems, the spread was slowing.

Chinese government bodies from transport, social security, industry watchdogs and immigration said they had suspended services ranging from processing applications to traffic crime enforcement.

It was not immediately clear whether those services were suspended due to attacks, or for emergency patching to prevent infection.

“If a system supports some kind of critical processes those systems typically are very hard to patch … We don’t have a precedent for something of this scale (in China),” said Marin Ivezic, a cybersecurity expert at PwC in Hong Kong.

Affected bodies included a social security department in the city of Changsha, the exit-entry bureau in Dalian, a housing fund in Zhuhai and an industry watchdog in Xuzhou.

Energy giant PetroChina said payment systems at some of its petrol stations were hit, although it had been able to restore most of the systems.

Elsewhere in Asia, the impact seems to have been more limited. Japan’s National Police Agency reported two breaches of computers in the country on Sunday – one at a hospital and the other case involving a private person – but no loss of funds.

Industrial conglomerate Hitachi Ltd. said the attack had affected its systems at some point over the weekend, leaving them unable to receive and send e-mails or open attachments in some cases.

In India, the government said it had only received a few reports of attacks on systems and urged those hit not to pay attackers any ransom. No major Indian corporations reported disruptions to operations.

At Indonesia’s biggest cancer hospital, Dharmais Hospital in Jakarta, around 100-200 people packed waiting rooms after the institution was hit by cyber attacks affecting scores of computers. By late morning, some people were still filling out forms manually, but the hospital said 70 percent of systems were back online.

South Korea’s presidential Blue House office said nine cases of ransomware were found in the country, but did not provide details on where the cyber attacks were discovered. A coal port in New Zealand shut temporarily to upgrade its systems.

(Writing by Peter Graff, editing by Peter Millership)

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