Europol head Ron Wainwright speaking to ITV 14 May
- another attack could occur on Monday
- at the moment facing an escalating threat
- had been concerned over computer systems in healthcare sector in many countries
- attack now known to have hit 200k victims in 150 countries
- most victims not paying ransom
In addition UK security researcher "MalwareTech", who helped to limit the ransom ware attack, also predicted "another one coming... quite likely on Monday".
"It's very important that people patch their systems now.We have stopped this one, but there will be another one coming and it will not be stoppable by us.
"There's a lot of money in this. There's no reason for them to stop. It's not really much effort for them to change the code and then start over.
So there's a good chance they are going to do it... maybe not this weekend, but quite likely on Monday morning."
On Sunday he warned hackers could upgrade the virus to remove the "kill switch" that helped to stop it.
"Version 1 of WannaCrypt was stoppable but version 2.0 will likely remove the flaw. You're only safe if you patch ASAP,"
The virus exploits a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows software, first identified by the US National Security Agency, experts have said. In the UK, critics said the government had known about the threat of a cyber-attack for some time, but hospitals had not made the right upgrades to protect themselves.
A security update was released by Microsoft in March to protect against the virus, but it appears many NHS organisations had not applied it or were using an older version of the operating system no longer supported - namely Windows XP.
NHS Digital said that 4.7% of devices within the NHS use Windows XP, with the figure continuing to decrease.
Adam had an update yesterday while the BBC has more here
I'm out of here now. Enjoy the rest of your week-end one and all. It's going to be lively in the days ahead.
