2nd LD Writethru: Britain's NHS hit by widespread cyber attack

Britain's National Health Service (NHS) was hit by a wide scale cyber attack on Friday, causing failures of IT systems across the country.

Officials described it as the worst ever attack on the NHS.

Hospitals affected are believed to have lost the use of phone lines and computers, with some diverting all but emergency patients elsewhere.

Early reports said 16 NHS health trusts, including trusts and hospitals in London, Blackburn, Nottingham, Cumbria and Hertfordshire had been affected by the attack.

The NHS was considered in 2015 to be one of the biggest organisations in the world, employing around 150,000 hospital doctors and 315,000 nurses and thousands more in community health services.

Some general practitioner (GP) surgeries had to shut down phone and IT systems while emergency rooms at some major hospitals told people not to attend casualty departments except in urgent emergencies.

Some hospitals cancelled non-urgent operations.

Officials at NHS England said they were looking into the situation.

Simon Enright, director of communications for NHS England, said: "This attack was not specifically targeted at the NHS and is affecting organisations from across a range of sectors."

The Patients Association said the attack appeared to have been "highly co-ordinated and aggressive."

"A police investigation will no doubt be required," it added.

"Though today's may be the largest attack of this sort, it is not the first -- yet the lessons from earlier incidents have not been learnt."

NHS Digital said there was no evidence that patient data had been accessed.

A spokesman said: "A number of NHS organisations have reported to NHS Digital that they have been affected by a ransomware attack which is affecting a number of different organisations. The investigation is at an early stage, but we believe the malware variant is Wanna Decryptor. At this stage, we do not have any evidence that patient data has been accessed."

"NHS Digital is working closely with the National Cyber Security Centre, the Department of Health and NHS England to support affected organisations and to recommend appropriate mitigations. Our focus is on supporting organisations to manage the incident swiftly and decisively."

There were posts circulating on social media sites of screen-shots demanding ransoms of several hundred U.S. dollars to remove the malware. Endit