Some of the world’s largest companies including WPP, Rosneft, Merck and AP Moller-Maersk have confirmed that they have been hit by a large-scale cyber attack that also took critical government and bank infrastructure in Ukraine offline on Tuesday.
The ransomware attack bears similarities to WannaCry, which infected hundreds of thousands of computers in 150 countries last month, according to cyber security experts. No one has yet claimed responsibility for the latest attack.
Researchers at Group IB, a Moscow-based cyber security company, said the hackers shut down access to computers and displayed a message demanding a $300 ransom from users, payable in bitcoins.