DHS: Ransomware Attack Minimal in US, Did Not Hit Federal Govt

The Department of Homeland Security said a few U.S. companies had been affected by the global ransomware worm and that the overall disruption to those infrastructures was minimal, Reuters reported.

Further, the attack, which began Friday and had hit at least 200K organizations in 150 countries, was slowing down Monday - the situation in Europe was stable, the BBC reported.

So far, $50,000 had been paid out in the extortion campaign, BBC reported.

Authorities said they do not who was behind the extortion attack, but Europol is working with the FBI to determine that, SkyNews reported.

The speed of how quickly the WannaCry malware propagated by using a worm surprised investigators, but so did the lack of sophistication behind the attack; the attackers built in a kill switch on a domain but hadn't registered the site.

That allowed a 22-year-old cyber sleuth to find the kill switch and end the attack hours after it began, he told SkyNews.

"Although the exploit used is very sophisticated (taken from NSA leak), the ransomware itself seems somewhat amateur," he told SkyNews.

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