Companies have a lot to fear from Russia’s digital warmongering

NOTPETYA IS A nasty name for the world’s vilest computer attack. Embedded in an innocuous piece of tax software, the virus, which the American government said had the Kremlin’s fingerprints all over it, struck Ukraine in June 2017, knocking out federal agencies, transport systems, cash machines—even the radiation monitors at Chernobyl, the husk of a nuclear-power station.It then went rogue, worming its way from the computers of multinational firms with local outposts in Ukraine to their global operations, causing collateral damage to victims ranging from Maersk, a huge shipping company, and Saint-Gobain, a French construction giant, to Mondelez International, owner of Cadbury chocolate. The total hit was put at $10bn, making it the costliest such attack ever. One of the most expensive blows fell on Merck, a New Jersey-based drugmaker with a market value close to $200bn, which lost 40,000 computers in the blink of an eye and was forced to halt manufacturing of its human-papillomavirus vaccine.