Cybersecurity: Cyber attacks hit 200,000 victims in 150-plus countries

Europol's director spoke on Sunday warnbing that Friday's massive cyber attack had affected over 200,000 users in "at least" 150 countries and that these figures could rise.

Europol' s director, Rob Wainwright, spoke on British independent Television (ITV) and warned that Friday's ransomware cyber attack would continue to propagate next Monday morning, as soon as "workers return to their offices and switch on their computer terminals."

The WannaCry malicious ransomware virus launched a massive attack, last Friday, and reportedly became the biggest virus attack to this day.

"We perform some 200 cyber crime operations every year but we had never seen anything like this before," Wainwright said.

The head of Europol added they had warned for quite some time now that national health sectors were particularly prone to becoming targets of such attacks "as they process huge amounts of sensitive, personal records" suggesting that these organizations must prioritize their IT network protection measures and promptly update any software versions they work with.

Wainwright added that Friday's large-scale attack sent a "clear message": All sectors are vulnerable and must take very seriously the need to update their systems and download the most recent patches available" Europol's director stressed.

Wainwright mentioned the banking sector as a reference in the cyber defense field as they have "learned to live and handle cyber attacks."

"Very few banks in Europe, if any, have been affected because they have painfully learned they are one of the prime targets," said the London School of Economics graduate and former counter-terrorism and organized crime intelligence analyst.

The head of the pan European police agency pointed out they were working on the hypothesis that Friday's massive cyber-hack was the work of common criminals, not terrorists, while assuring they had obtained a "very low number of Bitcoin ransom payments" in exchange for freeing compromised, encrypted, computers.

British Home secretary, Amber Rudd, recommended the affected NHS organizations to "Not pay" the ransom as the malicious WannaCry software demanded.

Friday's cyber attack seriously hit the UK's National Health System (NHS) and affected many other countries such as Spain, France, Germany, or Russia, randomly hitting telecom corporations, carmakers, courier companies, railways, and banks.