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With the large number of people infected with the Coronavirus for treatment, hospitals and health centers have become a popular target for hackers who use malware, especially for the purpose of financial extortion.
Hackers are betting that these institutions will not risk refusing to pay ransoms and suffer potentially disastrous consequences for patients as the epidemic begins to spread again in Europe and the United States.
The alarm sounded on Wednesday after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the United States’ Departments of Interior and Health said they had reliable information indicating an “imminent electronic threat to hospitals and providers of American health services “.
The United States has called on healthcare establishments “to quickly take adequate precautions to protect their computer networks”.
Cyber attacks occur through the use of ransomware (“ransomware”), which is a type of malicious program that prevents access to a website or computer until the victim sends a sum of money.
The University of Vermont hospital, which was affected by the attack, said it was cooperating with authorities regarding a “cyber attack, claiming an impact on some of our systems” with “varying effects” on them. patient care.
People will die
Daniel dos Santos of the “Forskout” Foundation for Electronic Security said that around 400 hospitals have been the victims of hackers of their information systems in recent weeks in the United States and Great Britain.
“Cutting sickness care means people will die,” he added.
And healthcare sites cannot accept the fact that their information systems will be inaccessible for a longer period of time because it means going back to doing everything manually, “which can cause a significant slowdown” in service delivery, he said. ‘expert.
The hospital sector has weak information systems because it uses medical devices, such as scanners, which are considered “weak links in the network” because they transmit data over unsecured channels.
In a report, dos Santos and his colleagues pointed out that they discovered on the Internet data concerning three million American patients who are “not protected and accessible to all after having carried out research”.
Do not pay the ransom
A survey by security firm Check Point showed healthcare to be the most targeted industry for hackers, so their attacks on U.S. institutions in October were up 71%.
The company said there was also a sharp increase in cyber attacks against hospitals in Asia, Europe and the Middle East. The company confirmed that cyberattacks aimed at extortion doubled in the third quarter compared to the first half of the year.
Many of these attacks use “Ryuk” malware linked to North Korean and Russian hackers.
According to American authorities, they use sophisticated tools, including “Trickbot”, which is a network of computers affected by an electronic virus.
Trickbot, which first emerged as a virus attacking banks in 2016, has now become what is known as “malware as a service”, a toolkit that cybercriminals rent from other hackers who want to infiltrate a particular network or carry out an attack. electronic.
And the Canadian authorities warned through the “Cyber Center” in early October of the attacks of the Ryuk program “which affects many (public) entities, including municipalities and health and safety organizations in Canada and abroad”.
“The problem with ransomware is that it gets worse. A solution must be found as soon as possible, ”said Brett Callow of cybersecurity firm Emsisoft, calling for a ban on ransom payments.
He added that this type of attack “exists because it is profitable. If the tap on the money is turned off, these attacks will stop and hospitals will no longer be in danger.”
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