Hospital epidemic: another medical institution had to declare an emergency due to a cryptographer

The Methodist Hospital of Kentucky, USA, recently announced an “internal wretched position” because of the infection of its servers and PC of the treating physicians with cryptographer. The virus has penetrated everywhere, and the entire hospital computer system had to be turned off. But at the same time, the organization turned out to be better prepared for the incident than their colleagues , who paid $ 17,000 to the creators of the cryptographer.

On the main page of the hospital site it was previously reported that access to communication systems and network resources is limited. The reason is the infection of the computer network of the hospital with the Locky virus. Doctors had to turn off all computer systems, both infected and non-infected, and then scan each PC for malware.

“We have a fairly reliable emergency response system developed a few years ago ... we had to turn off the system and turn on the computers one at a time,” said David Park, a hospital spokesman. The developers of the malware demanded an amount of $ 1600 for decrypting hospital files (not reported for each infected PC or for the entire system as a whole).
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During the restoration of the system, doctors had to record patient data on paper, but this did not affect the overall effectiveness of the organization. "We went to work with the paper, but it did not have a negative impact on the work with patients," - said the hospital. Patient data were not affected.

Specialists who were engaged in solving the problem have already figured out how the cryptographer got into the hospital's computer system. It turned out that everything is standard: the malicious file was attached to an e-mail message. Someone from the staff discovered this message, and the virus went for a walk throughout the network. Now the hospital is assisted by the FBI, trying to figure out the authors of the message with the malware.



In this case, everything was more or less costly, but still, cryptographers are becoming more and more perfect. And after all, the facts about the infection of hospital systems that go to the Internet are just the tip of the iceberg. Who knows how many organizations and people actually suffered from ransomware, and what harm, apart from losses in terms of money, these cryptographers have inflicted and continue to cause.