Europe Under Massive Cyber Attack

Follow CBSMIAMI.COM: Facebook | Twitter

MIAMI (CBSMiami) - Europe is under attack, a ransomware cyber attack.

An outbreak of malicious data-scrambling software appears to be causing mass disruptions, hitting Ukraine especially hard.

Company and government officials reported serious intrusions at the Ukrainian power grid, banks, and government offices, where one senior official posted a photo of a darkened computer screen and the words, "the whole network is down."

Russia's Rosneft oil company also reported falling victim to hacking, as did Danish shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk.

"We are talking about a cyber attack," said Anders Rosendahl, a spokesman for the Copenhagen-based group. "It has affected all branches of our business, at home and abroad."

The number of companies and agencies reportedly affected by the ransomware campaign was piling up fast, and the electronic rampage appeared to be rapidly snowballing into a real-world world crisis. Dutch daily Algemeen Dagblaad says that container ship terminals in Rotterdam run by a unit of Maersk were also affected. Rosneft said that the company narrowly avoided major damage.

"The hacking attack could have led to serious consequences but neither the oil production nor the processing has been affected thanks to the fact that the company has switched to a reserve control system," the company said.

There's very little information about what might be behind the disruption at each specific company, but cyber security experts rapidly zeroed in on a form of ransomware, the name given to programs that hold data hostage by scrambling it until a payment is made.

"A massive ransomware campaign is currently unfolding worldwide," said Romanian cyber security company Bitdefender. In a telephone interview, Bitdefender's Bogdan Botezatu said that he had exampled samples of the program and that it appeared to be nearly identical to GoldenEye, one of a family of rogue programs that has been circulating for months.

It's not clear whether or why the ransomware has suddenly become so much more potent, but Botezatu said that it was likely it was spreading through a "wormable exploit" _ cybersecurity lingo for a program that can spread automatically across a network without the need for human interaction. Worms are particularly feared because they can spread rapidly, like an extremely contagious cold.

"It's like somebody sneezing into a train full of people," said Botezatu. "You just have to exist there and you're vulnerable."

The world is still recovering from a previous outbreak of ransomware, called WannaCry or WannaCrypt, which spread rapidly using digital break-in tools originally created by the U.S. National Security Agency and recently leaked to the web.

This particular variant of ransomware leaves a message with a contact email; several messages sent to the address were not immediately returned.

(© Copyright 2017 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)