More than 2,100 computers around the world were infected over the weekend with ransomware that exploited a two-year-old vulnerability in server software made by VMware Inc., according to cybersecurity researchers and authorities.
The infected machines represent a fraction of the more than 66,000 internet-connected computers that could be potential targets, said Patrice Auffret, founder and chief executive officer of Onyphe SAS, a French cybersecurity firm that scanned the internet for fingerprints of the attackers’ code in the wild. Cybersecurity agencies in France, Italy, Canada and other countries published advisories disclosing the attacks and urged organizations using the vulnerable software to fix it.
