List of Cyberattack Victims Grows to More Than 200,000 -- 6th Update

The cyberattack that spread around the globe over the weekend, hitting businesses, hospitals and government agencies in at least 150 countries, is likely to keep growing as people around the world return to work, law-enforcement authorities warned.

Investigators launched a far-reaching hunt for the perpetrator, as institutions around the world worked to mitigate damage from the highest-profile computer-worm outbreak in nearly a decade. Europe's police-coordination agency estimated at least 200,000 individual terminals had fallen victim to the attack, while Chinese authorities put the number as high as 1 million world-wide.

"This is something we haven't seen before," Europol director Rob Wainwright told U.K. television channel ITV. "The global reach is unprecedented."

Among the highest-profile corporate victims was French auto maker Renault SA, which was forced to shut down factories across Europe.

When workers arrived at a Renault plant in Sandouville, in northern France, on Saturday morning, TV screens that usually update staff on company productivity had a different message: A demand, in French, for $300 in ransom. The screens also showed two clocks counting down the time Renault had to deliver the payments before the factory's files were deleted.

"Everyone was running around, saying we've been hacked," said Mohamed Amri, a 41-year-old parts maker. "It spread like wildfire."

The cyberattack involved a ransomware dubbed WannaCry, designed to spread quickly after infecting computers. Files on affected computers were encrypted, and users were told to pay a ransom with bitcoin, an untraceable online currency, to unscramble them.

So far, the virus hasn't been blamed for destroying hardware itself. Where users have backed up data, long-term damage likely can be limited. But some targets responding to the attack had to shut down entire systems to help combat or slow the virus.

The computers of dozens of hospitals and health-care facilities in the U.K. were affected, but officials said that -- so far -- there was no indication patients had been put in grave danger from the outages. They also said patient data hadn't been stolen. German train operator Deutsche Bahn AG said its trains were running as usual despite the attack, though it was straining to get its computer systems back online. U.S. delivery company FedEx Corp. was also affected.

The police force in Yancheng, a Chinese city 200 miles north of Shanghai, apologized on its official social-media account for being unable to provide certain services because of the virus. A swath of Chinese gasoline stations, run by China National Petroleum Corp., was closed because of the attack.

Russia's central bank said domestic banks had been targeted, according to state news agency RIA. Sberbank, Russia's largest lender, said Friday night its cyber infrastructure had been targeted but that it had fended off the attack, news wires reported. The country's interior ministry said around 1,000 computers had been affected, but that the attack had been localized.

Britain's National Cyber Security Center, a government agency, said Sunday that there hadn't been any new attacks similar to Friday's, but that existing infections from the malware could continue to spread within networks.

"This means that as a new working week begins it is likely, in the U.K. and elsewhere, that further cases of ransomware may come to light, possibly at a significant scale," the agency said.

The virus was slowed down over the weekend by the identification and activation of a "kill switch" embedded in the virus' code, computer experts said. But few believe it was halted completely, and one security expert had identified late Sunday at least one new strain, unaffected by the kill switch, though it was spreading slowly.

While the U.S. appears relatively unscathed compared with Europe and Asia, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security all were on the case. Tom Bossert, President Donald Trump's homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, held emergency meetings with cabinet members Friday night and Saturday morning at the White House, an administration official said Sunday.

Government agencies have started a global manhunt for the perpetrator -- a complex international probe that requires the same sort of cooperation and intelligence sharing common in large terrorist attacks.

Security experts have been able to track a small amount of bitcoin transactions they said were likely ransom linked to the attack. It was impossible to say how many companies were paying, or whom they were paying. Unlike bank and other financial accounts, bitcoin accounts are theoretically untraceable to their owners.

The attack took advantage of security vulnerabilities in Microsoft Corp. software that was either too old to be supported by security patches or hadn't been patched by users. Microsoft on Sunday said that the software tool used in the attack came from code stolen from the National Security Agency. The NSA has declined to comment on the matter.

None of the infected computers had installed a March 14 software patch by Microsoft that stopped the worm, either because they were running older versions of Microsoft Windows that no longer received software updates, or because companies had simply delayed installing the software.

An early sign of trouble at the Renault plant in Sandouville came when the assembly line's alarm system stopped working early Saturday -- right after the demand for ransom appeared on TV screens. Tanguy Deschamps, a 38-year-old who was working at the factory when the virus hit, said the alarms were failing to sound whenever workers tried to alert others to crooked or improperly welded parts.

Management told workers to unplug the machines.

At 1 a.m. French time, Malik Denon was making final alterations on cars that were almost finished when his boss came down to tell him Renault had been hacked. At first, Mr. Denon thought it was a joke, but his boss wasn't laughing.

"He was panicked," Mr. Denon said.

Séverin Beuche, a local IT expert, was called to the plant Saturday morning to help restart the site.

"I've never seen something of this size," Mr. Beuche said. He and a crisis unit worked around the clock to rebuild servers that had been crippled.

The auto maker's cybersecurity team time pored over company computer systems before the factories were due to resume full production on Monday.

The assembly remained dormant Saturday. Instead of making car parts, workers were asked to tidy up the factory. Union officials estimated that 100 cars weren't produced at the plant as a result of the hack.

--Robert McMillan in San Francisco, Liza Lin in Shanghai and Louise Radnofsky in Washington contributed to this article.

Write to Nick Kostov at Nick.Kostov@wsj.com, Jenny Gross at jenny.gross@wsj.com and Stu Woo at Stu.Woo@wsj.com

The cyberattack that spread around the globe over the weekend, hitting businesses, hospitals and government agencies in at least 150 countries, is likely to keep growing as people around the world return to work, law-enforcement authorities warned.

Investigators launched a far-reaching hunt for the perpetrator, as institutions around the world worked to mitigate damage from the highest-profile computer-worm outbreak in nearly a decade. Europe's police-coordination agency estimated at least 200,000 individual terminals had fallen victim to the attack, while Chinese authorities put the number as high as 1 million world-wide.

"This is something we haven't seen before," Europol director Rob Wainwright told U.K. television channel ITV. "The global reach is unprecedented."

Among the highest-profile corporate victims was French auto maker Renault SA, which was forced to shut down factories across Europe.

When workers arrived at a Renault plant in Sandouville, in northern France, on Saturday morning, TV screens that usually update staff on company productivity had a different message: A demand, in French, for $300 in ransom. The screens also showed two clocks counting down the time Renault had to deliver the payments before the factory's files were deleted.

"Everyone was running around, saying we've been hacked," said Mohamed Amri, a 41-year-old parts maker. "It spread like wildfire."

The cyberattack involved a ransomware dubbed WannaCry, designed to spread quickly after infecting computers. Files on affected computers were encrypted, and users were told to pay a ransom with bitcoin, an untraceable online currency, to unscramble them.

So far, the virus hasn't been blamed for destroying hardware itself. Where users have backed up data, long-term damage likely can be limited. But some targets responding to the attack had to shut down entire systems to help combat or slow the virus.

The computers of dozens of hospitals and health-care facilities in the U.K. were affected, but officials said that--so far--there was no indication patients had been put in grave danger from the outages. They also said patient data hadn't been stolen. German train operator Deutsche Bahn AG said its trains were running as usual despite the attack, though it was straining to get its computer systems back online. U.S. delivery company FedEx Corp. was also affected.

Japan's Hitachi Ltd. said Monday that its email system had been hit. It said system failures had affected it in Japan and overseas, and that the issue hadn't yet been resolved as of Monday morning.

The police force in Yancheng, a Chinese city 200 miles north of Shanghai, apologized on its official social-media account for being unable to provide certain services because of the virus. A swath of Chinese gasoline stations, run by China National Petroleum Corp., was closed because of the attack.

Russia's central bank said domestic banks had been targeted, according to state news agency RIA. Sberbank, Russia's largest lender, said Friday night its cyber infrastructure had been targeted but that it had fended off the attack, news wires reported. The country's interior ministry said around 1,000 computers had been affected, but that the attack had been localized.

Britain's National Cyber Security Center, a government agency, said Sunday that there hadn't been any new attacks similar to Friday's, but that existing infections from the malware could continue to spread within networks.

"This means that as a new working week begins it is likely, in the U.K. and elsewhere, that further cases of ransomware may come to light, possibly at a significant scale," the agency said.

The virus was slowed down over the weekend by the identification and activation of a "kill switch" embedded in the virus' code, computer experts said. But few believe it was halted completely, and one security expert had identified late Sunday at least one new strain, unaffected by the kill switch, though it was spreading slowly.

While the U.S. appears relatively unscathed compared with Europe and Asia, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security all were on the case. Tom Bossert, President Donald Trump's homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, held emergency meetings with cabinet members Friday night and Saturday morning at the White House, an administration official said Sunday.

Government agencies have started a global manhunt for the perpetrator--a complex international probe that requires the same sort of cooperation and intelligence sharing common in large terrorist attacks.

Security experts have been able to track a small amount of bitcoin transactions they said were likely ransom linked to the attack. It was impossible to say how many companies were paying, or whom they were paying. Unlike bank and other financial accounts, bitcoin accounts are theoretically untraceable to their owners.

The attack took advantage of security vulnerabilities in Microsoft Corp. software that was either too old to be supported by security patches or hadn't been patched by users. Microsoft on Sunday said that the software tool used in the attack came from code stolen from the National Security Agency. The NSA has declined to comment on the matter.

None of the infected computers had installed a March 14 software patch by Microsoft that stopped the worm, either because they were running older versions of Microsoft Windows that no longer received software updates, or because companies had simply delayed installing the software.

An early sign of trouble at the Renault plant in Sandouville came when the assembly line's alarm system stopped working early Saturday--right after the demand for ransom appeared on TV screens. Tanguy Deschamps, a 38-year-old who was working at the factory when the virus hit, said the alarms were failing to sound whenever workers tried to alert others to crooked or improperly welded parts.

Management told workers to unplug the machines.

At 1 a.m. French time, Malik Denon was making final alterations on cars that were almost finished when his boss came down to tell him Renault had been hacked. At first, Mr. Denon thought it was a joke, but his boss wasn't laughing.

"He was panicked," Mr. Denon said.

Séverin Beuche, a local IT expert, was called to the plant Saturday morning to help restart the site.

"I've never seen something of this size," Mr. Beuche said. He and a crisis unit worked around the clock to rebuild servers that had been crippled.

The auto maker's cybersecurity team time pored over company computer systems before the factories were due to resume full production on Monday.

The assembly remained dormant Saturday. Instead of making car parts, workers were asked to tidy up the factory. Union officials estimated that 100 cars weren't produced at the plant as a result of the hack.

Robert McMillan in San Francisco, Liza Lin in Shanghai and Louise Radnofsky in Washington contributed to this article.

Write to Nick Kostov at Nick.Kostov@wsj.com, Jenny Gross at jenny.gross@wsj.com and Stu Woo at Stu.Woo@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 15, 2017 00:13 ET (04:13 GMT)