The worldwide "ransomware" cyberattack spread to thousands of more computers on Monday as people logged in at work, disrupting business, schools, hospitals and daily life, though no new large-scale breakdowns were reported. In Britain, whose health service was among the first high-profile targets of the attack on Friday, some hospitals and doctors' offices were still struggling to recover. The full extent of the damage from the cyberattack felt in 150 countries was unclear and could worsen if more malicious variations of the online extortion scheme appear. The initial attack, known as "WannaCry," paralyzed computers running factories, banks, government agencies and transport systems in scores of countries, including Russia, Ukraine, Brazil, Spain, India and Japan, among others. Among those hit were Russia's Interior Ministry and companies including Spain's Telefonica and FedEx Corp. in the US. Carmaker Renault said one of its French plants, which employs 3,500 people, wasn't reopening Monday as technicians dealt with the cyberattack's aftermath. The temporary halt in production was a "preventative step," Renault said. Britain's National Health Service said about a fifth of NHS trusts — the regional bodies that run hospitals and clinics — were hit by the attack on Friday, leading to thousands of canceled appointments and operations. Seven of the 47 affected trusts were still having IT problems on Monday. Ciaran Martin, chief executive of the UK's National Cyber Security Centre, has warned that more computers could be infected on Monday as doctors' practices re-opened after the weekend. The Japan Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center, a nonprofit group providing support in computer attacks, said 2,000 computers at 600 locations in Japan were reported affected. Companies including Hitachi and Nissan Motor Co. reported problems but said they said had not seriously affected their business operations. Chinese state media said 29,372 institutions there had been infected along with hundreds of thousands of devices. Universities and other educational institutions in China were among the hardest hit, possibly because schools tend to have old computers and be slow to update operating systems and security, said Fang Xingdong, founder of ChinaLabs, an internet strategy think tank. On social media, students complained about not being able to access their work, and people in various cities said they hadn't been able to take their driving tests over the weekend because some local traffic police systems were down. Railway stations, mail delivery, gas stations, hospitals, office buildings, shopping malls and government services also were affected, China's Xinhua News Agency said, citing the Threat Intelligence Center of Qihoo 360, a Chinese internet security services company. Elsewhere in Asia, the Indonesian government urged businesses to update computer security after the malware locked patient files on computers in two hospitals in the capital, Jakarta. Patients arriving at Dharmais Cancer Hospital had to wait several hours while staff worked with paper records. Experts urged organizations and companies to immediately update older Microsoft operating systems, such as Windows XP, with a patch released by Microsoft Corp. to limit vulnerability to a more powerful version of the malware — or to future versions that can't be stopped.
