Microsoft said on Friday, May 12, its engineers had added detection and protection against a ransomware attack that had disrupted hospitals in England and infected computers in dozens of other countries around the world, Reuters reports.
"Today our engineers added detection and protection against new malicious software known as Ransom:Win32.WannaCrypt," a Microsoft spokesman said in a statement. It said the company was working with its customers to provide additional assistance.
A global cyber attack leveraging hacking tools believed to have been developed by the U.S. National Security Agency has infected tens of thousands of computers in nearly 100 countries, disrupting Britain's health system and global shipper FedEx.
Cyber extortionists tricked victims into opening malicious malware attachments to spam emails that appeared to contain invoices, job offers, security warnings and other legitimate files.
