Massive ransomware attacks world wide

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Tens of thousands of ransomware attacks are targeting organizations around the world on Friday. Cybersecurity firm Avast said it has tracked more than 75,000 attacks in 99 countries. It said the majority of the attacks targeted Russia, Ukraine and Taiwan.

The ransomware, called "WannaCry," is spread by taking advantage of a Windows vulnerability that Microsoft released a security patch for in March. But computers and networks that haven't updated their systems are at risk. The exploit was leaked last month as part of a trove of NSA spy tools.

"Affected machines have six hours to pay up and every few hours the ransom goes up," said Kurt Baumgartner, the principal security researcher at security firm Kaspersky Lab. "Most folks that have paid up appear to have paid the initial $300 in the first few hours."

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