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Renault and Nissan are among the businesses affected by massive ransomeware attack

SINGAPORE/TORONTO, May 14 (Reuters) - Technical staff scrambled on Sunday to patch computers and restore infected ones, amid fears that the ransomware worm that stopped car factories, hospitals, shops and schools could wreak fresh havoc on Monday when employees log back on. Cybersecurity experts said the spread of the virus dubbed WannaCry - "ransomware" which locked up more than 200,000 computers - had slowed, but the respite might only be brief. New versions of the worm are expected, they said, and the extent of the damage from Friday's attack remains unclear. Infected computers appear to largely be out-of-date devices that organizations deemed not worth the price of upgrading or, in some cases, machines involved in manufacturing or hospital functions that proved too difficult to patch without possibly disrupting crucial operations, security experts said. Marin Ivezic, cybersecurity partner at PwC, said that some clients had been "working around the clock since the story broke" to restore systems and install software updates, or patches, or restore systems from backups. Microsoft released patches last month and on Friday to fix a vulnerability that allowed the worm to spread across networks, a rare and powerful feature that caused infections to surge on Friday. Code for exploiting that bug, which is known as "Eternal Blue," was released on the internet in March by a hacking group known as the Shadow Brokers. The group claimed it was stolen from a repository of National Security Agency hacking tools. The agency has not responded to requests for comment. Hong Kong-based Ivezic said that the ransomware was forcing some more "mature" clients affected by the worm to abandon their usual cautious testing of patches "to do unscheduled downtime and urgent patching, which is causing some inconvenience." He declined to identify which clients had been affected. The head of the European Union police agency said on Sunday the cyber assault hit 200,000 victims in at least 150 countries and that number will grow when people return to work on Monday. "The global reach is unprecedented ... and those victims, many of those will be businesses, including large corporations," Europol Director Rob Wainwright told Britain's ITV. "At the moment, we are in the face of an escalating threat. The numbers are going up, I am worried about how the numbers will continue to grow when people go to work and turn (on) their machines on Monday morning." MONDAY MORNING RUSH?

Demand for electric car rentals unplugged by range anxiety

It's the hurdle that electric vehicles must clear to be launched into the mainstream: range anxiety. But this time it isn't prospective customers who worry about running out of juice, Bloomberg reports, but renters who return to car rental agencies before their lease is up and trade their EVs in for more traditional gasoline-powered autos and gas-electric hybrids.
"People are very keen to try [electric vehicles], but they will switch out of the contract part way through ... they think they can't get to a charging station," says Lee Broughton, head of sustainability at Enterprise. Enterprise customers who rent EVs reportedly trade them in 1.6 days into the rental period on average, which compares unfavorably to the six- to seven-day rental periods of traditional, fuel-burning automobiles.
Christopher Agnew, an analyst at MKM Holdings LLC, says that longer range would help rental customers' range anxiety, especially since they are usually renting vehicles in unfamiliar places.

Nissan will build just 45 examples of this 45th Anniversary GT-R

It's been 45 years since the release of the original Nissan Skyline GT-R, so to celebrate, the Japanese automaker has announced this special commemorative edition. Based on the newly updated 2015 Nissan GT-R in Premium trim, the 45th Anniversary edition is done up in a unique shade called Silica Brass – the same color as the legendary R34-gen 2001 Skyline GT-R M-Spec. It also comes with the requisite special badging inside and under the hood, but unfortunately, that's about the extent of the special touches applied to this celebratory model. Nissan will only make 45 highly symbolic examples of this special edition, each to be sold on a strictly first-come, first-served basis. And unfortunately they'll be restricted to the Japanese market, where they'll each command a sticker price of 10,787,040 yen – equivalent to about $91,700 at today's rates, which is already a good ten grand less than what you'd pay for a standard GT-R in the US, anyway. Nissan Releases the Limited-Edition "45th Anniversary" GT-R – Production will be limited to 45 vehicles – YOKOHAMA, Japan (November 25, 2014) - Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. today announced that the Limited-Edition "45th Anniversary" Nissan GT-R will go on sale in early February throughout Japan, in conjunction with the release of the 2015 model year GT-R. Since its release in 2007, the Nissan GT-R has been recognized as the world's foremost high performance super sports car, which embodies Nissan's commitment to "innovation that excites" like no other. The GT-R's legacy continues as the ultimate "GT" (Grand Tourer), armed with a comfortable ride, a high level of refinement and benchmark fit and finish; while its world-class high performance embodies the "R" in its name (Racing technology). Thus, its "multi performance" character allows the driver to enjoy the full depths of the GT-R's capabilities, whether navigating corners of a winding mountain road, simply cruising on the open highway or even running errands on neighborhood streets. Based on the 2015 Nissan GT-R, which features ride quality that has been specially tuned to exhibit a more mature, better refined feel than its predecessors, the "45th Anniversary" will come with a special paint color, "Silica Brass" – the same trademark color as the Skyline GT-R M-Spec (R34 Type), which was touted as the "a GT-R that satisfies the mature driver" when it was released in 2001.