What is GoldenEye?
IT experts have dubbed the new virus GoldenEye, and say it appears to be a more-potent version of ransomware that started circulating recently.
GoldenEye is in turn a variant of even older code called Petya, which scrambles files on computer's hard drive, requiring a code to unlock it.
Petya is particularly effective because, rather than scrambling files one by one, it blocks access to a whole hard drive in one go, analyst hasherezade wrote previously.
Another analyst, Bogdan Botezatu, told ABC that GoldenEye is a 'worm'-type virus, spreading from machine to machine automatically, with no need for human interaction.