Originally centered on Ukraine, the attacks have now spread to Britain and the United States.
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The global phenomena of massive hacking interference has continued once again, with Ukrainian infrastructure facing the brunt of anonymous attacks. The country's national bank, state power company, and its largest airport in Kyiv have all been crippled by the hacks.
Update 6/27 1:11 PM ET: The New York Times reports that the wave of malware has now spread to the United States, affecting the networks of pharmaceutical giant Merck as well as a U.S.-based international law firm.
Showing the extent of the damage, deputy Prime Minister Rozenko Pavlo tweeted out of a picture of what appeared to be his government computer with a message urging the user not to shut down the computer, saying that one of its disks has an error and needs to be prepared. "We also have a network down," he says. "This image is being displayed by all computers of the government."
A statement released from the National Bank of Ukraine, without naming the branches damaged, says that some banks in the country are having "difficulties with customer service and banking operations." The statement goes on to say that the "central bank is confident that the banking infrastructure's defense against cyberfraud is properly set up and attempted cyberattacks on banks' IT systems will be neutralized."
Several utilities in Ukraine have been hit, from power systems to the payment system in Kyiv's subway. State energy company Ukrenergo says thats its IT system have been hit by a cyberattack, but the disruption had "no effect on power supplies." Meanwhile the radiation monitoring system at the site of the former Chernobyl nuclear power plant has gone down, with employees switching to manual radiation monitoring with handheld sensors. There have been reports that gas cannot be purchased. Kyiv's metro systems appear to be running, but the Metro notes on Twitter with a visual similar to Pavlo's that payment through credit card is impossible.
Such frustrations have increasingly become part of everyday life around the world. For Ukrainians in particular, these hacks might induce a sense of deja vu dating back to last year, when the country was similarly attacked. These attacks bear some similarity to the Wannacry attacks in May which shut down hospitals in England, with partial ransomeware elements.
It's unclear what exactly happened within the Ukrainian government, which has blamed Russia for past cyberattacks. Oil companies within Russia have also reported seeing ransomware notes fill their screens.
Infrastructure around the world is particularly vulnerable to hacks for a number of reasons: Employees are often not trained in best Internet practices, leaving them opening to downloading files in an act of social engineering that will harm their computers, as well as out-of-date industrial ethernet switches, which are built to connect facilities in a private intranet. An intranet might reject an unfamiliar firmware update, a generic password could leave an entire system open.
At some point, infrastructure across the globe will either take have to take basic steps towards safety. Either that, or continue to suffer at the hands of hackers.