Hackers launched a virus, and three hospitals stopped seeing patients.
WBRC TV channel reported about the crisis that happened in Alabama state where hospitals of DCH Health System group were closed.
On October 1, three hospitals could not normally accept patients, except for emergency cases. The rest of the patients were redirected to hospitals in Birmingham and Mississippi. As it turned out, the hospital databases have been blocked by an attack of the Ryuk virus. CrowdStrike, the American cybersecurity company said that this virus was created by the Russian hacking group, Wizard Spider, in 2018.
On October 5, DCH Health System spokesperson said that they had to pay hackers for a decryption key. The situation needed immediate resolving as databases had to be restored as soon as possible. When hospitals are reopened is still unknown. All three medicals centers count about 850 beds, and the flow of patients exceeds 32,000 per year.
DCH Health Systems didn’t specify the sum they gave to pay off. Although said that medical group intends to cooperate with ethical hackers to continuously test patient databases and identify threats that could cause blocking. As the patient database leaks can lead to scandals and lawsuits, thus the cyber protection enhancing is the top of mind issue right now.
