Jigar Jobanputra

London:  A huge extortion cyberattack hit dozens of nations Friday, holding computer data for ransom at hospitals, telecommunications firms and other companies. The attack appeared to exploit a vulnerability purportedly identified for use by the US National Security Agency and later leaked to the internet. The attack hit Britain's health service, forcing affected hospitals to close wards and emergency rooms. Related attacks were reported in Spain, Portugal and Russia. Two security firms — Kaspersky Lab and Avast — said they had identified the malware behind the attack in upward of 70 countries, although both said the attack has hit Russia hardest. The Russian Interior Ministry has confirmed it was hit by the "ransomware" attack, which encrypts data on infected computers and demands payment, usually via digital currency bitcoin, to release it. Britain's health service was also hit hard Friday as the attack froze computers at hospitals across the country, ...

BERLIN: In a setback to the social networking giant, a German court has upheld its decision asking it to obtain the permission of WhatsApp users in the country before processing their personal data to Facebook. The court also overturned Germany’s privacy regulator’s order that the companies delete data they had already transferred, a report in technology website InfoWorld said on Wednesday. Last August, Facebook-owned WhatsApp changed its privacy policy to allow the transfer of its users’ personal information to Facebook for processing — a move that has also created a furore in India. The move angered the Hamburg Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, which in September ordered the companies to stop the transfer until they had obtained users’ consent and to delete any data they had already transferred, the report said. Facebook challenged the order in Hamburg’s administrative court and the court handed down its ruling. The court upheld the C...