I remember a comment that in order to clean up the web it would have to be shut down. I think if this were a real cyber attack it would have been a lot more random. It looks as though China wanted to 'wait and see' the results before letting the program loose on their networks.
It seems to have hit with the special summit over the weekend in the Far East.
As my dog would indicate, 'I smell a rat'. It's not so much the countries it has hit, as the ones it hasn't that Is interesting. All sorts of issues regarding the use of the web have come out in the open, so it it inherently a good thing.
Perhaps the money raised from this scam might go to a good cause if people have paid up.
If it's going to terrorism and crime in bitcoin, then the bitcoin industry will get shut down.