A Ransomware Attack Has Struck a Major US Hospital Chain
Universal Health Services, a hospital and health carenetwork with more than 400 facilities across the United States, Puerto Rico, and United Kingdom, suffered a ransomware attack early Sunday morning that has taken down its digitalnetworks at locations around the US.
As the situation has spiraled, some patients have reportedly been rerouted to other emergency rooms and facilities and had appointments and test results delayed as a result of the attack.
An emergency room technician at one UHS-owned facility tells WIRED that their hospital has moved to all-paper systems as a result of the attack.
The company did not return a request for further comment from WIRED and would not confirm that it is a ransomware attack.
Hospitals, in particular, have long been a favorite target, because patient safety hangs in the balance when a hospital's network goes down. In addition to UHS, the Ashtabula County Medical Center in Ohio and Nebraska Medicine have both suffered ransomware attacks in recent days that caused system outages and threatened patient services.
And earlier this month, a patient with a life-threatening condition died in Dsseldorf, Germany, after a ransomware attack at a nearby hospital forced her to be taken to a more distant facility.
It's often preceded by a phishing attack that infects a target with a trojan, then exfiltrates the victim's data and triggers a Ryuk infection. The ransomware seems to be used by a few splinter groups in addition to its originators, though, making it difficult to trace and correlate activity from the presence of the malware alone.
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