Hospital under ransomware attack, requested ransom of 3.6 million dollars

For more than a week Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center has remained in a state of emergency after a ransomware has knocked out the internal network asking a ransom of 3.6 million dollars. Attacks of this kind are always subtle, but when you hit a sensitive structure as it can be a hospital, the payment of a ransom may be worth saving one or more lives.

The attack has naturally affected the hospital's ability to take care of patients, as the medical staff did not have access to extended periods to the reports of the workshops and the test results saved on the local network. As we have already had the opportunity recently, ransomware is malware that inhibit access to a network or to a single system to the payment of a ransom.

Once you pay the sum required users re-gain access to your data and the full functionality of the machine or network. Currently professionals and administrators to work at the Hollywood Presbyterian struggle to communicate and send information by phone or fax, to the point that they were forced to send new patients elsewhere and transfer the most critical of other medical facilities not involved in the attack.
To date we do not know if some of the data present in the hospital network has been permanently impaired, since the leadership of the structure has not yet released comments on the subject. In recent months we have witnessed a wave of ransomware in Italy, and this type of hack is by no means rare in the world of cybercrime. But if in the case of attacks aimed at ordinary users are few requests hundred euro at most, in that of infrastructure so delicate the deal could be much larger.

If Presbyterian Hospital amounted to $ 3.6 million, with ransomware that forced the employees of the structure to record a lot of information with pen and paper. The hospital is working with the LAPD and FBI to uncover the identity of the attackers and restore the full functionality of networks and individual systems of the plant.