How is it terrorism if the purpose is to get money?

I meant it in a more general way: a group of horrible people taking over a core function of society and saying "If you don't do x we will do y." And they will actually do y.

As you may have gathered, my original statement is more eloquent.

It isn't more eloquent, because it's wrong. Wouldn't saying: "The new mafia." or "The new shake-down" be more accurate?

Terrorism is done for political reasons and often involves things that involve putting fear into the populace. Your general "If you don't do x we will do y." statement does cover terrorism, but it covers terrorism because it covers _all kinds of threats_. So I suppose what you really meant was: "The new threat."

Words are important :]

Ah sorry, I got it wrong twice.

But you got me thinking again: because this ransomware is targeting the infrastructure itself (national healthcare service) isn't this playing with fear too? If I was in hospital, or my friends/family, I would be acutely paranoid that medical devices will go wrong, medicine administration will go wrong, the A&E will go bonkers et cetra. I've worked in healthcare before, and this kind of domino effect is very easy to believe in.

(Funnily enough, my old organisation was making a fuss about upgrading from Windows XP just last year. A lot of my colleagues complained that this was hardly a priority)

Hmmm, that's a fair point. And now I'm wondering what my primary care last security report turned up. There's also some things that I still haven't told me doctors-- because I really don't believe in their ability to not disclose it somehow. And I want to remind everyone that you will pay for computer security no matter what--- you can either pay for it upfront, or you can pay ransoms in the future.

There's no evidence that this attack targeted the NHS specifically, they are simply one of the most visible victims