Friday's cyber attack hit 200,000 victims in at least 150 countries and there are fears that number will grow when people return to work tomorrow. 


The head of the European Union's police agency said what was unique about the attack was that the ransomware was used in combination with "a worm functionality" so the infection spread automatically. 


Speaking on ITV, Europol Director Rob Wainwright said: "The global reach is unprecedented. 


"The latest count is over 200,000 victims in at least 150 countries, and those victims, many of those will be businesses, including large corporations." 


"At the moment, we are in the face of an escalating threat. 


"The numbers are going up, I am worried about how the numbers will continue to grow when people go to work and turn (on) their machines on Monday morning." 


Technical staff around the world scrambled to patch computers and restore infected ones amid fears that the ransomware worm that stopped car factories, hospitals, shops and schools could wreak fresh havoc in the morning. 


Cyber security experts yesterday said the spread of the virus dubbed WannaCry had slowed. However, they warned that the respite may be brief. 


New versions of the worm are expected, and the extent of the damage from Friday's attack is still unclear. 


Marin Ivezic, cyber security partner at PwC, said that some clients had been "working around the clock since the story broke" to restore systems and install software updates, or patches, or restore systems from backups. 


Microsoft released patches last month and on Friday to fix a vulnerability that allowed the worm to spread across networks, a rare and powerful feature that caused infections to surge on Friday. 


Code for exploiting that bug, which is known as "Eternal Blue", was released on the internet in March by a hacking group known as the Shadow Brokers. 


The group claimed it was stolen from a repository of National Security Agency hacking tools. The agency has not responded to requests for comment

Source: NNA