Nissan Sunderland plant hit by 'unprecedented' cyberattack

Europol says nothing like this has happened before.

The Nissan plant in Sunderland is among the companies hit by the 'unprecedented' worldwide ransomware attack.

Organisations across the planet were hit by the 'WannaCry' bug, which locked computer users out of their systems and demanded payment to a Bitcoin account.

A Nissan spokesman said: "Like many organisations, our UK plant was subject to a ransomware attack affecting some of our systems on Friday night. Our teams are working to solve this issue." The impact on production was unknown.

French car manufacturer Renault was also affected, with union representatives leaking the news before it was confirmed officially.

Europol, the European law enforcement agency, said on Saturday the attack was on an "unprecedented level".

Identifying the culprits would require a "complex international investigation," a statement by Europol's European Cybercrime Centre, also known as EC3.

EC3 is "is specially designed to assist in such investigations and will play an important role in supporting the investigation," the statement added.

While the WannaCry virus made headlines for its debilitation of NHS computers, attacks on health services were not restricted to the UK. In Indonesia, at least two hospitals were targeted by the ransomware virus. Private companies around the world were also struck.

In Germany, screens displaying train times at stations were knocked offline. Online ticket facilities for football clubs in Norway and Sweden were also broken. Spanish communication company Telefonica was severely affected.

Russia, Ukraine and Taiwan are believed to be the worst hit countries out of the 99 targeted.

Experts believe the attack is most likely to be criminal in nature, rather than connected to a state actor.