A new cyberattack similar to WannaCry is spreading across Europe, hitting major companies from Rosneft PJSC in Moscow to A.P. Moller-Maersk in Copenhagen and disrupting government systems in Kiev.

More than 80 companies in Russia and Ukraine were affected by the Petya virus that disabled computers Tuesday and told users to pay $300 in cryptocurrency to unlock them, according to the Moscow-based cybersecurity company Group-IB. Telecommunications operators and retailers were also affected and the virus is spreading in a similar way to the WannaCry attack in May, it said.

The intrusion is "the biggest in Ukraine's history," Anton Gerashchenko, an aide to the Interior Ministry, wrote on Facebook. The goal was "the destabilization of the economic situation and in the civic consciousness of Ukraine," though it was "disguised as an extortion attempt," he said.

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