Free Republic

A massive ransomware campaign appears to have infected a number of organisations around the world. Computers in thousands of locations have apparently been locked by a program that demands $300 (£230) in Bitcoin. There have been reports of infections in more than 70 countries, including the UK, US, China, Russia, Spain, Italy and Taiwan. Many security researchers are linking the incidents together. "This is huge," said Jakub Kroustek at Avast. Another, at cyber-security firm Kaspersky, said that the ransomware had been spotted cropping up in 74 countries and that the number was still growing. There were a number of reports...

Netflix isn't alone: Agencies and others are balancing demands for money against the fears of stolen data ending up online. Phones are the lifeblood of a talent agency like UTA, but on April 11, its IT department discovered an intruder lurking in the voicemail system and computer network and quickly decided to shut them down, sending agents to conduct business on their iPads. Soon thereafter a demand from a hacker arrived: Pay a ransom or watch the agency's most confidential data get posted online. It turns out UTA was lucky — an outside cybersecurity firm was brought in and, after...

Hackers using a tool stolen from the United States government conducted extensive cyberattacks on Friday that hit dozens of countries around the world, severely disrupting Britain’s public health system and wreaking havoc on computers elsewhere, including Russia. The tool was leaked by a group calling itself the Shadow Brokers, which has been dumping stolen N.S.A. hacking tools online since last year. Microsoft rolled out a patch for the vulnerability in March, but hackers apparently took advantage of the fact that vulnerable targets — particularly hospitals — had yet to update their systems. The malware was circulated by email. Targets were...