New digital ‘hurricane’ churns, gathering strength to land blow on the Internet

A map compiled by British company Malware Tech displays the geographical distribution of the WannaCry ransomware cyber-attack over the past 24 hours on May 12, 2017, as seen on a computer screen in Portland Ore. (Alex Milan Tracy/Sipa USA/TNS)

WASHINGTON: Just as hurricane trackers chart storms in the Atlantic before they make landfall, cybersecurity researchers track viral infections that threaten mayhem. They've found a doozy. 

A massive zombie robotic network, or botnet, has expanded to infect "an estimated million organizations" and could bring corners of the internet to its knees, an Israeli cybersecurity company, Check Point Software, says.