Washington, May 16 (RHC-Xinhua) -- A widespread ransomware cyber-attack that affected about 150 countries worldwide over the weekend has appeared to slow down, but uncertainty still remains. 

According to the White House on Monday, less than 70,000 U.S. dollars has been paid in the ransomware cyber-attack.  "We are not aware of payments that have led to any data recovery," White House Homeland Security adviser Tom Bossert told a daily briefing.  Bossert said the ransomware attack, known as WannaCry or WannaCript, has infected more than 300,000 machines in about 150 countries, but the good news is "the infection rates have slowed over the weekend." 

The WannaCry ransomware virus has rapidly spread across computer systems globally, including major countries such as China, Italy, Russia and Britain.  The ransomware attack is boiling down to a computer virus that makes users' computers useless unless a payment is made to those who hacked their system. 
 
On Sunday, Microsoft slammed the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) because vulnerabilities used for the attack was first discovered by the spy agency, but it chose to keep them secret until they were stolen and leaked.