Hacked hospital chain Universal Health Services says all 250 U.S. facilities hobbled by attack

[xeni]

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/10/01/hacked-hospital-chain-universal-health-services-says-all-250-u-s-facilities-hobbled-by-attack.html

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[Brainspore]

Imagine what kind of sick fucks would purposely shut down a hospital network in the middle of the deadliest disease pandemic in a century. That’s basically an act of mass murder.

[docosc]

Data is the lifeblood of medical practice these days. Trying to practice without access to lab values, pathology reports, radiology reports, past history and so on is just not really possible. It makes my skin crawl to think of it.

[CongenitalOptimist]

As I understand it - a Ryuk ransom ware will stop you from also accessing vendor business continuity applications (BCA) because you can’t login past exchange of AD credentials.

You could proactively print off day sheet reports from BCA (prior to infection) but that takes a hell of a lot of paper per unit per day.

Scary shit.

[Mindysan33]

But they stuck it to the libtards, so…

[lizard-of-oz]

Since you can buy the software required for such a hack for $200-300, the only way to prevent this is laws that hold vendors liable for security flaws in their products, and firing the entire IT department when stuff like this happens. Fire the CEO too, for good measure, because he failed to see the risk, even though this shit has been happening for some time now.

@Brainspore

Imagine what kind of sick fucks would purposely shut down a hospital network in the middle of the deadliest disease pandemic in a century. That’s basically an act of mass murder.

FWIW: In Germany some hackers targeted a hospital by accident, they thought they were targeting a university. Once they noticed their mistake, the provided the key to unlock the files again for free.

@docosc

Data is the lifeblood of medical practice these days.

A pity that both vendors and hospitals’ IT department do not act accordingly and ensure that systems are secure.

@docosc

Trying to practice without access to lab values, pathology reports, radiology reports, past history and so on is just not really possible. It makes my skin crawl to think of it.

I’m curious, why can’t these reports be just sent on paper in a situation like this? This was the normal way of doing it for ages. Is it because modern lab and radiology equipment is also affected?

[docosc]

If the tests are run, results entered into the system, then the system goes down there really isn’t a paper trail. Most imaging studies no longer exist outside computers. Lab results generally are not put to paper. Past medical history is not written down at all anymore. Electrons rule all.