Officials in nearly 100 countries raced last weekend to contain one of the biggest cybersecurity attacks in recent history, according to an article on the Washington Post website.
The malware hit Britain’s National Health Service particularly hard, causing widespread disruptions and interrupting medical procedures across hospitals in England and Scotland, the article said.
The attack was notable because it took advantage of a security flaw in Microsoft software found by the National Security Agency for its surveillance tool kit. Files detailing the capability were leaked online last month, though after Microsoft, alerted by the NSA to the vulnerability, had sent updates to computers to patch the hole.
Many systems were still left vulnerable, either because system administrators failed to apply the patch or because they used outdated software. Hospitals lag far behind other industries in upgrading their security and doing basic software updates.
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