NCSC urges vigilance in wake of cyber attack

Although there are fears that a new strain of the WannaCry virus could be used to deliver another coordinated attack, the bigger threat is likely to come from machines already infected from Friday’s hack. The NHS was one of several organisations targeted, resulting in patients being turned away from A&E and operations being cancelled.

“Since the global coordinated ransomware attack on thousands of private and public sector organisations across dozens of countries on Friday, there have been no sustained new attacks of that kind,” the NCSC said in a statement.

“But it is important to understand that the way these attacks work means that compromises of machines and networks that have already occurred may not yet have been detected, and that existing infections from the malware can spread within networks. This means that as a new working week begins it is likely, in the UK and elsewhere, that further cases of ransomware may come to light, possibly at a significant scale.”