People Are ‘Dying In Hospital Corridors’ Under Britain’s Socialized Healthcare System

There’s new outrage overseas, as people are literally dying in the corridors of hospitals because of Britain’s overrun socialized medicine scam. In case Venezuela didn’t do enough to prove that socialism is a deadly joke on humanity, Britain’s healthcare system should be the last nail in its coffin.

The patients are dying in hospital corridors as safety is jeopardized by intolerable conditions say doctors in Britain, according to the BBC last week.  More details continue to emerge surrounding the newest outrages which have sprung up from Britain’s crisis-beset healthcare system. This most recent revelation came as a result of an open letter sent to the Prime Minister by 68 senior doctors, offering details of the inhuman conditions which have become common in the socialized National Health Service’s hospitals.

The letter, which collected statistics from NHS hospitals in England and Wales, found that in December alone over 300,000 patients were made to wait in emergency rooms for more than four hours before being seen. Thousands more suffered long waits in ambulances before even being allowed into the emergency room. But the revelation of horrors was just beginning. The letter further noted that it had become “routine” for patients to be left on gurneys in corridors for as long as 12 hours before being offered proper beds, with many of them eventually being put into makeshift wards hastily constructed in side-rooms. In addition, it was revealed that around 120 patients per day are being attended to in corridors and waiting rooms, with many being made to undergo humiliating treatments in the public areas of hospitals, and some even dying prematurely as a result. One patient reported having gone to the emergency room with a gynecological problem which had left her in severe pain and bleeding, a lack of treatment rooms led hospital staff to examine her in a busy corridor, in full view of other patients. “There was no dignity. It was degrading,” she said. “I couldn’t fault the staff, there was nothing they could do. It was chaos.”

As the NHS entered the first week of 2018, over 97% of its trusts in England were reporting levels of overcrowding so severe as to be “unsafe.” For those who champion socialism, it’s tempting to believe that these extreme cases must be a rare occurrence, but the statistical facts prove otherwise. Horror stories have become increasingly the norm for any socialized healthcare system, just as under socialism in general, poverty becomes the norm.

it doesn’t look like this socialized system will ever work as the horrifying reality gets worse. Many insist that by pumping more taxpayer money into it, the state-run healthcare system somehow magically become a utopia.  Almost as predictable as the regular emergence of new stories of this kind is the equally unwavering refusal of British commentators to consider that the state-run monopoly structure of the system itself might be to blame. Many, including the Prime Minister herself, have pointed to the spike in seasonal illnesses such as the flu at this time of year, to distract from the more fundamental flaws of the system. Officials from Public Health England went so far as to openly dismiss this as a major cause of the current healthcare crisis, stating that current levels of hospital admissions due to the flu are “certainly not unprecedented.” The aging population and local councils’ failure to provide more non-hospital care have also been blamed.

By far the most commonly suggested remedy is simply to inject more taxpayers’ money into this failing system. Indeed, the belief that Britain’s perpetual healthcare crisis is solely the result of funding cuts by miserly Conservative politicians is so widespread that it is almost never challenged, least of all by the trusted experts within the system itself, many of whom stand to benefit from increased funding.

The popular caricature of the NHS as suffering from chronic underfunding is simply a myth. In fact, even when adjusting for inflation, it is clear that government funding to the NHS has been increasing at an extraordinary rate since the turn of the millennium, much more quickly than during the early years which its supporters look back on so fondly.

One commonly heard soundbite from supporters of the current system is that the Conservatives have allowed healthcare spending to slump to historically low levels; all it would take to return the NHS to the levels of success it supposedly previously enjoyed would be to increase its funding back to the same level it previously enjoyed, or so they say. However, to believe such a statement one would have to make two separate misinterpretations of the statistics, both so basic that they would strike shame into even the dullest high school math student: firstly, it is not the absolute amount of spending on the NHS which has fallen under the Conservative-led governments of 2010-18, but merely the rate at which spending is continuing to increase, even when adjusting for inflation. Secondly, the only reason that the rate of increase seems to have fallen is because of how disproportionately high it had been been under the infamously spendthrift Labour governments of 1997-2010. –Mises

What would it take to revive the dead socialized healthcare scheme? Simple.  Free markets. More competition and freedom of choice would not only lower costs but give those in need a say in their own health. As long as British healthcare is organized as a taxpayer-funded state monopoly it will continue to fail, regardless of the amount of money thrown at the problem.

Can Britain Afford To Be A Hard Power?

Authored by Matthew Jamison via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Recently the UK Royal Navy and Ministry of Defence unveiled their brand new aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth at a cost of 3 Billion Pounds. This at a time when UK national finances are under heavy pressure and the country has been experiencing seven years of severe austerity.

It has recently come to light that in true Ministry of Defence fashion (poor project management & wasteful spending, duplication, poor planning, lack of oversight and accountability) the true costs are set to rocket even further for more aircraft needed to be able to land properly on HMS QE. How very British. The decision to go ahead with a brand new and very expensive aircraft carrier for the UK at a time of acute social and economic headwinds has been hailed by some as an exciting new weapon in Britain"s hard power arsenal that will allow Britain to «punch above her weight» in world affairs and global power projection rankings in Jane"s Weekly.

Some however question if Britain can really afford such an expensive project such as a new aircraft carrier when the Prime Minister Theresa May repeatedly said during the recent General Election that there was no magic money tree for nurses, police, firefighters, doctors, in essence all public sector workers – yet there is 1 Billion Pounds for the DUP and 3 Billion Pounds for a new aircraft carrier that perhaps given the cost and the reality of Britain"s position in the world could have been done without. The cost goes to the heart of the politics of reality and a realism that is sorely lacking in British foreign & defence policy. Can the country really afford such an object when 3 Billion Pounds could have been a major boost to a National Health Service under severe strain? Or imagine what 3 Billion Pounds could do to improve social housing? Or 3 Billion Pounds invested in a National Bank dedicated to helping the carers of those suffering from Alzheimer"s and/or Dementia?

The decision to go ahead with the HMS Queen Elizabeth exemplifies everything that is currently wrong and indeed utterly divorced from reality with the current Government. It goes to the heart over the debates surrounding what kind of country Britain really is, wants to be and should be. Is Britain in reality a strong, successful, competent hard military power with an indispensable, irreplaceable military role to play in world affairs as former Prime Minister Tony Blair would have the country believe with his vision of British foreign policy? Or is it a country with some sections of its public and establishment divorced from reality, still living in a bygone imperial era clinging tenaciously to a shameful period of time in British history and politico-cultural-militarist narratives that are just simply false?

Is it in reality a country with tremendous assets mainly within the soft power field of the arts and humanities such as language, culture, entertainment, acting, drama, academia, museums, libraries, sport, music as well as cutting edges in science, technology and engineering. However beyond that sphere of soft power the British have quite a mixed and mediocre record. The British economy is the most unproductive in the G7, one of the most unproductive economies in the OECD. British efficiency and rigour are substandard as is the work ethic to a great degree. Very little proper thought, planning and analysis goes into project management in Britain. The quality of good management and leadership in Britain is sorely lacking whether it be in the political, governmental, economic, or indeed military sphere. Nothing ever really works properly or functions correctly in Britain from its transport infrastructure, customer services, public services etc.

Which brings us back to the decision to build this aircraft carrier at such a huge cost in the first place. What is Britain trying to prove? Why must its Ministry of Defence spend billions upon billions of taxpayers money creating weapons of mass destruction, «boys toys», when there are so many internal problems in the country crying out for social and economic redress. Further more Britain has become a disruptive force in world affairs. It has steadily taken on the role of disruptor in what was seen as the traditional Western Alliance of North America and Europe. At this time of acute international challenges and turbulence in world affairs it is Britain which has become a major contributor to such turbulence and has added to the complexity of the problems facing the international community, not lessened those problems. With this new found role Britain must be treated accordingly. The British have sadly played up to all the worst stereotypes regarding Britain during this period and have demonstrated on a massive scale how unreliable, undependable and two faced they can be. All the brand new, multi-billion pound shiny aircraft carriers (that don"t even properly work once set out to sea) in the world will not be able to gloss over that fundamental truth of regarding the collective, national character.

Perhaps it is time for future British Governments to disabuse themselves of the vanity and pretentiousness that previous British Governments both Labour and Tory have exhibited regarding Britain"s military power. Perhaps it is time to face facts and come to terms with reality. Britain can have a significant role to play within the soft power sphere. But as a hard power, taking part in massive American led military interventions whether it be in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and allowing an incompetent and poorly governed Ministry of Defence to continually waste so much taxpayers money as if they had a guaranteed government/taxpayer «Magic Money Tree» must be brought to an end. Furthermore at this time of extreme economic and social challenges that Britain is facing it would be a very wise course of action indeed if Britain were to focus a lot more of its time, resources and energy on putting its own house in order rather than spending vast amounts of money on maintaining a non-essential, non-vital role as a very junior, supporting member of the American Western Alliance.

British Think Tank Warns Hackers Could Access Nuclear Subs, Fears "Catastrophic Exchange Of Warheads"

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

Cyber security has become a preeminent issue in the modern world. That’s because so much of our standard of living is now reliant on computers that can often be easily hacked. Computers may make our lives easier, but they’ve given our civilization a whole new vulnerability to worry about. Our privacy, our infrastructure, and our financial systems are now at the mercy of hackers.

But those threats pale in comparison the vulnerability of our nuclear arsenals. Yes, you read that correctly. You’d think that the nuclear arsenals fielded by Western governments would have levels of security that are so tight, that they’d be virtually impossible to hack, but that’s not the case. According to the British American Security Information Council think tank, the UK’s Trident nuclear submarines are certainly vulnerable to hackers, contrary to the claims of the government.

“Submarines on patrol are clearly air-gapped, not being connected to the internet or other networks, except when receiving (very simple) data from outside. As a consequence, it has sometimes been claimed by officials that Trident is safe from hacking. But this is patently false and complacent,” they say in the report.

Even if it were true that a submarine at sea could not be attacked digitally, the report points out that the vessels are only at sea part of the time and are vulnerable to the introduction of malware at other points, such as during maintenance while docked at the Faslane naval base in Scotland.

The report says: “Trident’s sensitive cyber systems are not connected to the internet or any other civilian network. Nevertheless, the vessel, missiles, warheads and all the various support systems rely on networked computers, devices and software, and each of these have to be designed and programmed. All of them incorporate unique data and must be regularly upgraded, reconfigured and patched.”

Fortunately, this kind of cyber attack couldn’t be committed by just any old yahoo with a computer. It would require the resources that governments typically have access to. Still, this threat is sobering when you consider that these submarines apparently utilize the same Windows software that is used by Britain’s National Health Service, which was thoroughly infiltrated by the WannaCry malware last month.

So if someone did manage to hack these missiles, what could they do with them? Let’s just say that what could be done with these missiles will keep you up at night.

Hackers could take control of Britain’s atomic weapons and use them to start a “catastrophic” global nuclear war, tech experts have warned.

In a report published today, the British American Security Information Council (BASIC) said that cyber-spies could commandeer the systems which power the nation’s Trident submarines and then launch devastating attacks.

“A successful attack could neutralise operations, lead to loss of life, defeat or perhaps even the catastrophic exchange of nuclear warheads,” the report warned.

Back in the Cold War, people used to worry about the wrong people having access to “the red button.” But now nuclear war appears to be “just a click away.”

This Is The World's Most Active Battlefield - Watch Cyber-War In Real-Time

Today’s most active battlefield is not located on the ground, in the air, or on the mighty seas. It’s taking place on the internet – and, as Visual Capitalist"s Jeff Desjardins notes, if you’re still a non-believer, spend a few minutes with the following live map to watch a representation of cyber attacks as they happen...

Created by Norse Corporation, a cyber intelligence firm that claims to get instant attack telemetry from over eight million sensors deployed worldwide, the map visualizes cyberwar in real-time and organizes attacks by type, origin, and target. (A full-screen version is also available.)

Source: Visual Capitalist

PREDATOR AND PREY

Who is responsible for these attacks, and who is the target?

In our few minutes of watching, the United States received nearly 70% of incoming attacks:

While we were not expecting this live visualization to literally cover every single hack worldwide, this does seem to match up with the ratio from other sources. For example, in a previous infographic on cyberwar, we noted that the U.S. is targeted in 66% of web application attacks, and in 54% of cyber espionage hacks.

In our few minutes of watching, about half of the attacks also originated from the United States. However, many also were launched from other countries such as China, Ukraine, and The Netherlands.

THE SCALE IS REAL

While the idea of cyber warfare still seems like science fiction for many people, recent events such as the WannaCry ransomware attack have made the scale and potential implications of cyber warfare much more real.

The above map from AFP shows that the WannaCry attack was unprecedented in scale, infecting more than 230,000 computers in over 150 countries. Using an exploit developed by the NSA, WannaCry infected Britain’s National Health Service (NHS), Spain’s Telefónica, FedEx, and Deutsche Bahn, along with many other companies or countries.

Ultimately, the hack had a built-in “killswitch” that was discovered by internet security experts. It also seemed to be relatively ineffective at collecting hefty amounts of ransom. Despite all of this, the reality is that the hack shut down hospitals and other businesses, giving us a true taste of the scale and impact that a professionally-executed cyber attack could have in the future.

Paul Craig Roberts Fears "The Exponential Growth Of Global Insecurity"

Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

There is no such thing as cyber security. The only choice is more security or less security, as the recent hack of the National Security Agency demonstrates.

Hackers stole from NSA a cyber weapon, which has been used in attacks (at time of writing) on 150 countries, shutting down elements of the British National Health Service, the Spanish telecommunications company Telefonica, automakers Renault and Nissan, Russia’s Interior Ministry, Federal Express, the energy company PetroChina, and many more.

The news spin is to not blame NSA for its carelessness, but to blame Microsoft users for not updating their systems with a patch issued two months ago. But the important questions have not been asked: What was the NSA doing with such malware and why did NSA not inform Microsoft of the malware?

Clearly, NSA intended to use the cyber weapon against some country or countries. Why else have it and keep it a secret from Microsoft?

Was it to be used to shut down Russian and Chinese systems prior to launching a nuclear first strike against the countries? Congress should be asking this question as it is certain that the Russian and Chinese governments are. As I previously reported, the Russian High Command has already concluded that Washington is preparing a nuclear first strike against Russia, and so has China.

It is extremely dangerous that two nuclear powers have this expectation. This danger has received no attention from Washington and its NATO vassals.

Microsoft president Brad Smith likened the theft of the NSA’s cyber weapon to “the US military having some of its Tomahawk missiles stolen.” In other words, with cyber weapons, as with nuclear weapons and short warning times, things can go wrong in a big way. http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39915440

What if the hackers had successfully attacked the Russian Ministry of Defense or radar warning systems, would the Russian High Command have concluded that the cyber attack was Washington’s prelude to incoming ICBMs?

The fact that no one in Washington or any Western government has stepped forward to reassure the Russian government and demand the removal of the US missile bases surrounding Russia indicates a level of hubris or denial that is beyond comprehension.

In my May 12 posting I wrote: “The costs of the digital revolution exceed its benefits by many times. The digital revolution rivals nuclear weapons as the most catastrophic technology of our time.” In response, Robert Henderson wrote to me from England that he had addressed the enormous costs of the digital revolution in 2010. Here is the link to his article, “Men and Machines: Which is Master Which is Slave?” 

Reading his article will raise your awareness. When you add up the vast financial costs, the depersonalization of human relationships, and the complete loss of individual privacy and security, the benefit of being connected is vastly outweighed by the costs.

Paper files are far more secure. Malware cannot be introduced into them. To steal a person’s information required knowing the location of the information, breaking into the building, searching file cabinets for the information, and copying the information. To intercept a voice communication required a warrant to wiretap a specific telephone line.

People born into a world where the ease of communication comes at the price of the loss of autonomy never experience privacy. They are unaware that a foundation of liberty has been lost.

In our era of controlled print and TV media, the digital revolution serves for now as a check on the ruling elite’s ability to control explanations. However, the same technology that currently permits alternative explanations can be used to prevent them. Indeed, efforts to discredit and to limit non-approved explanations are already underway.

The enemies of truth have a powerful weapon in the digital revolution and can use it to herd humanity into a tyrannical distopia. The digital revolution even has its own Memory Hole. Files stored electronically by older technology can no longer be accessed as they exist in an outdated electronic format that cannot be opened by current systems in use.

Humans are proving to be the most stupid of the life forms. They create weapons that cannot be used without destroying themselves. They create robots and free trade myths that take away their jobs. They create information technology that destroys their liberty.

Dystopias tend to be permanent. The generations born into them never know any different, and the control mechanisms are total.

And the digital screen serves as Soma.

Worried About 'WannaCry'? You Should Have Listened To Julian Assange

Authored by Adam Currie via TheDuran.com,

A widespread computer virus attack known as ‘WannaCry’ has been compromising computers with obsolete operating systems across the world. This should be the opening sentence of just about every article on this subject, but unfortunately it is not.

The virus does not attack modern computer operating systems, it is designed to attack the Windows XP operating system that is so old, it was likely used in offices in the World Trade Center prior to September 11 2001, when the buildings collapsed. Windows XP was first released on 25 August, 2001.

Furthermore, early vulnerabilities in modern Windows systems were almost instantly patched up by Microsoft as per the fact that such operating systems are constantly updated.

The obsolete XP system is simply out of the loop.

A child born on the release date of Windows XP is now on the verge of his or her 17th birthday. Feeling old yet?

The fact of the matter is that governments and businesses around the world should not only feel old, they should feel humiliated and disgraced.

With the amount of money governments tax individuals and private entities, it is beyond belief that government organisations ranging from some computers in the Russian Interior Ministry to virtually all computers in Britain’s National Health Service, should be using an operating system so obsolete that its manufacturer, Microsoft, no longer supports it and hasn’t done for some time.

Perhaps in order to save money, governments should also use prop-planes from the 1940s to conduct recon missions?

The scathing reality of this attack is that Julian Assange warned both private and public sectors to be on guard against known vulnerabilities in such systems, vulnerabilities Wikileaks helped to expose. Assange even offered to help companies to get their digital security up to date.

The fact that Assange’s plea fell on deaf ears must bring further shame to all those impacted by the ‘WannaCry’ attacks who refused to listen to Assange and get with the times.

As it is, the technology used in the hacking/malware incident was created by America’s National Security Agency (NSA).

World famous whistle-blower Edward Snowden had something to say about that,

If NSA builds a weapon to attack Windows XP—which Microsoft refuses to patches—and it falls into enemy hands, should NSA write a patch? https://t.co/TUTtmc2aU9

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) May 12, 2017

The fact is that, if only governments and mega-corporations took precautions to ensure actual safety measures were in place, rather than engaging in bogus fear-mongering in order to conceal their own incompetence and lack of modern technology, the people that such bodies are supposed to protect would be safe rather than misled and exposed to threats.

The blame for today’s attack can and should be equally shared by the hackers themselves and by those who patently ignored the warnings of Julian Assange, who advised the wider world to get clever, get secure and get modern upon the release of Vault 7 by Wikileaks.

When there is a wolf at your door, it is unwise to blame the person pointing out the presence of the hungry wolf. Those who attack Julian Assange for pointing out the wolf of un-secured computer systems are doing just that.

In real democracies, people would be brought before tribunals to justify their supreme dereliction of duty. In the apathetic corporatist liberal west, the story will be swept under the rug.

24 Hours Later: "Unprecedented" Fallout From "Biggest Ransomware Attack In History"

24 hours after it first emerged, it has been called the first global, coordinated ransomware attack using hacking tools developed by the NSA, crippling over a dozen hospitals across the UK, mass transit around Europe, car factories in France and the UK, universities in China, corporations in the US, banks in Russia and countless other mission-critical businesses and infrastructure.

According to experts, "this could be one of the worst-ever recorded attacks of its kind." The security researcher who tweets and blogs as MalwareTech told The Intercept, “I’ve never seen anything like this with ransomware,” and “the last worm of this degree I can remember is Conficker.” Conficker was a notorious Windows worm first spotted in 2008; it went on to infect over 9 million computers in nearly 200 countries.

The fallout, according to cyber-specialists, has been "unprecedented": it has left unprepared governments, companies and security experts from China to the United Kingdom on Saturday reeling, and racing to contain the damage from the audacious cyberattack that spread quickly across the globe, raising fears that people would not be able to meet ransom demands before their data are destroyed.

As reported yesterday, the global efforts come less than a day after malicious software, transmitted via email and stolen from the National Security Agency, exposed vulnerabilities in computer systems in almost 100 countries in one of the largest “ransomware” attacks on record. The cyberattackers took over the computers, encrypted the information on them and then demanded payment of $300 or more from users in the form of bitcoin to unlock the devices.

The ransomware was subsequently identified as a new variant of "WannaCry" that had the ability to automatically spread across large networks by exploiting a known bug in Microsoft"s Windows operating system.

The ransomware has been identifed as WannaCry

The hackers, who have not come forward to claim responsibility or otherwise been identified, likely made it a "worm", or self spreading malware, by exploiting a piece of NSA code known as "Eternal Blue" that was released last month by a group known as the Shadow Brokers (see "Hacker Group Releases Password To NSA"s "Top Secret Arsenal" In Protest Of Trump Betrayal") , researchers with several private cyber security firms said.

"This is one of the largest global ransomware attacks the cyber community has ever seen," said Rich Barger, director of threat research with Splunk. The extremely well coordinated attack first emerged in the United Kingdom around noon on Friday and spread like wildefire around the globe. According to the Times "it has set off fears that the effects of the continuing threat will be felt for months, if not years" and raised questions about the intentions of the hackers: Did they carry out the attack for mere financial gain or for other unknown reasons?

The animated map below shows the speed and scale of the global infestation which took just a few hours to cover the globe:

Animated map of how tens of thousands of computers were infected with ransomware https://t.co/LDFCW9K5Ls pic.twitter.com/E5Ep9KesaV

— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 13, 2017

Meanwhile, some of the world’s largest institutions and government agencies have been affected, including the Russian Interior Ministry, FedEx in the United States and Britain’s National Health Service. As people fretted over whether to pay the digital ransom or lose data from their computers, experts said the attackers might pocket more than $1 billion worldwide before the deadline ran out to unlock the machines.

Across Asia, several universities and organizations said they had been affected. In China, the virus hit the computer networks of both companies and universities, according to the state-run news media. News about the attack began trending on Chinese social media on Saturday, though most attention was focused on university networks, where there were concerns about students losing access to their academic work. The attack, however, focused on the UK and Europe where in addition to the British healthcare system, companies like Deutsche Bahn, the German transport giant; Telefónica, a Spanish telecommunications firm; and Renault, the French automaker, said some of their systems had been affected.

"Seeing a large telco like Telefonica get hit is going to get everybody worried," said Chris Wysopal, chief technology officer with cyber security firm Veracode.

The British National Health Service said that 45 of its hospitals, doctors’ offices and ambulance companies had been crippled — making it perhaps one of the largest institutions affected worldwide. Surgical procedures were canceled and some hospital operations shut down as government officials struggled to respond to the attack.

“We are not able to tell you who is behind that attack,” Amber Rudd, Britain’s home secretary, told the British Broadcasting Corporation on Saturday. “That work is still ongoing.”

Things only got worse on Saturday as auto production facilities across Europe have been shuttered, including car plants in the UK and France, in the aftermath of the cyberattack.

#BREAKING Renault says production halted at French sites after cyberattack

— AFP news agency (@AFP) May 13, 2017

Sky News understands production at the Nissan factory in Sunderland has been affected as a result of a cyber attack

— Sky News Newsdesk (@SkyNewsBreak) May 13, 2017

In total, more than 75,000 computers in 99 countries were compromised in Friday’s attack, with a heavy concentration of infections in Russia and Ukraine, according to Dutch security company Avast Software BV. Russia’s Interior Ministry, with oversees the country’s police forces, said “around 1,000 computers were infected,” which it described as less than 1 percent of the total, the New York Times reported. The ministry said technicians had stopped the attack and were updating the department’s “antivirus defense systems,” according to the Times. Russia"s RIA reported that the central bank said on Saturday it had detected "massive" cyber attacks on domestic banks, which successfully thwarted them.

* * *

There has been some good news: an ingenious discovery appears to have halted the spread of the virus for now. 

As part of the digital attack, the hackers included a way of disabling the malware in case they wanted to shut down their activities, Ars Technica reported. To do so, the assailants included code in the ransomware that would stop it from spreading if the virus sent an online request to a website created by the attackers. The kill switch would stop the malware from spreading as soon as the website went online and communicated with the spreading digital virus.

A British-based researcher, who declined to give his name, registered a
domain that he noticed the malware was trying to connect to, limiting
the worm"s spread. When the 22-year-old British researcher, whose Twitter handle is @MalwareTechBlog, confirmed his involvement but insisted on anonymity because he did not want the public scrutiny, saw that the kill switch’s domain name — a long and complicated set of letters — had yet to be registered, he bought it himself. By making the site go live, the researcher shut down the hacking attack before it could fully spread to the United States.

However, this temporary workaround will only last for a few days if not hours.

“I will confess that I was unaware registering the domain would stop the malware until after I registered it, so initially it was accidental,” wrote the @MalwareTechBlog researcher. “So long as the domain isn’t revoked, this particular strain will no longer cause harm, but patch your systems ASAP as they will try again.”

I will confess that I was unaware registering the domain would stop the malware until after i registered it, so initially it was accidental.

— MalwareTech (@MalwareTechBlog) May 13, 2017

“The kill switch is why the U.S. hasn’t been touched so far,” said Matthieu Suiche, founder of Comae Technologies, a cybersecurity company in the United Arab Emirates. “But it’s only temporary. All the attackers would have to do is create a variant of the hack with a different domain name. I would expect them to do that.”

Adds Reuters: "We are on a downward slope, the infections are extremely few, because the malware is not able to connect to the registered domain," said Vikram Thakur, principal research manager at Symantec.

"The numbers are extremely low and coming down fast." But the attackers may yet tweak the code and restart the cycle. The British-based researcher who may have foiled the ransomware"s spread told Reuters he had not seen any such tweaks yet, "but they will."

* * *

Meanwhile, questions are mounting why code created by the NSA. has i) fallen in the wrong hands and ii) is being used to hold the world hostage. As the NYT notes, the ability of the cyberattack to spread so quickly was partly because of its high level of sophistication.

The malware, experts said, was based on a method that the N.S.A. is believed to have developed as part of its arsenal of cyberweapons. Last summer, a group calling itself the “Shadow Brokers” posted online digital tools that it had stolen from the United States government’s stockpile of hacking weapons.  The connection to the N.S.A. is likely to draw further criticism from privacy advocates who have repeatedly called for a clampdown on how the agency collects information online.

Brian Lord, a former deputy director for intelligence and cyber operations at Government Communications Headquarters, Britain’s equivalent to the N.S.A., said that any investigation, which would include the F.B.I. and the National Crime Agency of Britain, would take months to name the potential attackers, if it ever does. And by focusing the attacks on large institutions with a track record of not keeping their technology systems up-to-date, global criminal organizations were cherry-picking easy targets that were highly susceptible to such hacks, according to Mr. Lord.

“Serious organized crime is looking to these new technologies to the maximum effect,” Mr. Lord said. “With cybercrime, you can operate globally without leaving where you already are.”

He added of this attack: “It was well thought-out, well timed and well coordinated. But, fundamentally, there is nothing unusual about its delivery. It is still fundamentally robbery and extortion.”

For now, the victims - both actual and potential - may have bought themselves some time. As part of the efforts to combat the attack, Microsoft, whose Windows software lies at the heart of the potential hacking vulnerability, released a software update available to those affected by the attack and others who could be potential targets. Microsoft took the “highly unusual” step of securing early operating systems in the wake of a massive ransomware attack that wreaked havoc on global computer networks, including the UK’s National Health Service. Overnight, Microsoft XP received the new security patch three years after the computer giant discontinued support for the OS.

“Seeing businesses and individuals affected by cyberattacks, such as the ones reported today [Friday], was painful,” a Microsoft statement read. “We are taking the highly unusual step of providing a security update for all customers to protect Windows platforms that are in custom support only, including Windows XP, Windows 8, and Windows Server 2003.”

Security experts however said the upgrade came too late for many of the tens of thousands of machines that were locked out and whose data could be erased if people did not pay the ransom. Earlier this year, Microsoft created a patch called MS17-010 to guard against the virus. But older, unsupported operating systems were not included in the update.

Making matters worse, government officials and industry watchers also warned on Saturday that other hackers might now try to use the global ransomware attack for their own means, potentially tweaking the code and developing their own targets for new cyberattacks.

* * *

Finally, there is the question who is behind this coordinated global attack. Not surprisingly, Russia has been named. There is a high-probability that Russian-language cyber-criminals were behind the attack, said Aleks Gostev, chief cybersecurity expert for Kaspersky Labs. “Ransomware is traditionally their topic,” he said cited by Bloomberg. “The geography of attacks that hit post-Soviet Union most also suggests that.”

Whoever is the responsible party behind this first, global, coordinated ransomware attack, the have demonstrated one thing: the world is thoroughly unprepared for cyberwar.

“As with everything in cyber, we’re now waiting for the next type of attack,” Paul Bantick, a cyber security expert at Beazley, a global insurance underwriter, told the NYT.

“Ransomware like this has been on the rise over the last 18 months,” he added. “This represents the next step that people were expecting.”

As such, it is only a matter of time now before an even greater, more destructive cyberattack is unleashed on the world.

Hospitals Across England Go Dark After Massive "Cyber-Attack"; Hackers Demand Ransom

Hosptials across the UK have been hit by what appears to be a major, nationwide cyber-attack, resulting in the loss of phonelines and computers, with many hospitals going "dark" and some diverting all but emergency patients elsewhere. At some hospitals patients are being told not to come to A&E with all non-urgent operations cancelled, the BBC reports.

The UK National Health Service said: “We’re aware that a number of trusts that have reported potential issues to the CareCERT team. We believe it to be ransomware.” It added that trusts and hospitals in London, Blackburn, Nottingham, Cumbria and Hertfordshire have been affected and are reporting IT failures, in some cases meaning there is no way of operating phones or computers.

At Lister Hospital in Stevenage, the telephone and computer system has been fully disabled in an attempt to fend off the attack.

NHS England says it is aware of the issue and is looking into it.

According to the Telegraph, doctors across the country have seen this message - what appears to be ransomware - flash up on their screens. The notification demands that $300 worth of bitcoin be sent to a specific address to unlock the infected computer.

One source told Health Service Journal that  multiple trusts had been affected by a suspected malware attack around 1.30pm. They said trusts had their computer systems almost entirely shut down.

East and North Hertfordshire NHS trust said in a statement: “Today the trust has experienced a major IT problem, believed to be caused by a cyber attack.

“The trust is postponing all non-urgent activity for today and is asking people not to come to A&E - please ring NHS111 for urgent medical advice or 999 if it is a life-threatening emergency.

“To ensure that all back-up processes and procedures were put in place quickly, the trust declared a major internal incident to make sure that patients already in the trust’s hospitals continued to receive the care they need.”Health officials are understood to have declared a major incident and ordered a meeting of national resilience teams.

NHS Digital said: “We’re aware that a number of trusts that have reported potential issues to the CareCERT team. We believe it to be ransomware.”

Routine appointments are being cancelled at Barts and other hospitals. Ambulances diverted. Major incidents being declared.

— Shaun Lintern (@ShaunLintern) May 12, 2017

There are reports that trusts affected include East and North Hertfordshire, North Cumbria, Morecambe Bay hospitals, Blackpool, and Barts Health in London. A number of GP surgeries also say they are also unable to use their systems.

IT specialists are working to resolve the problem as quickly as possible, a statement from the trust says. A GP from a surgery in York said: "We received a call from York CCG [Clinical Commissioning Group] around an hour ago telling us to switch off all of our computers immediately. "We have since remained open, and are dealing with things that can be dealt with in the meanwhile."

Services affected are thought to include picture archiving communication systems for x-ray images, pathology test results, phone and bleep systems and patient administration systems. The source added: “This will mean delays and a focus on the sickest patients. I’ve seen it once before and we relied on local trusts supporting each other. If truly widespread then that’ll not be an option.”