The FBI[1] said it is investigating a computer virus[2] that has forced a massive shutdown of a computer system of Medstar, a major hospital chain in the Baltimore-Washington area.
MedStar Health[3] operates 10 hospitals and employs 30,000 people in the Washington D.C. and Maryland region.
MedStar spokeswoman Ann Nickels said she couldn't say whether it was a ransomware attack[4].
"Such targets are particularly vulnerable because they can not afford to be paralysed for a long time either because their data has been encrypted or because they shut down the system to avoid spreading the infection, and they prefer to pay the ransom", he said.
The virus[5] affected thousands of patients and physicians, preventing users from logging into the computer system and forcing many locations to resort to back-up systems and paper transactions.
MedStar Health's IT system was invaded by a virus. It claimed that its action to temporarily shut down its network was an effort to prevent further spread of the virus.
Computer systems have been down across the MedStar network for a few hours, two employees told[6] Reuters, adding that they had received no indication yet when service would be restored.
There's a "lot of standing around", said the person, and things have "gotten progressively worse".
The incident was the latest against USA medical providers, coming weeks after a California hospital paid[7] ransom to free its infected systems using the bitcoin currency. Hackers have also targeted hospitals in Australia[8] and Europe[9], infecting their computer systems with ransomware[10] and demanding huge sums of money before they would send a key that would decrypt their files and unlock them and enable the healthcare facilities to resume normal operations.
"There's been a suspected cyber attack", said Baltimore FBI spokesman David Fitz.
"Ransomware is less about technological sophistication and more about exploitation of the human element".
Neither MedStar nor the Federal Bureau of Investigation has said how long it expects the systems to remain offline. The diversions were lifted as the hospitals' backup systems started operating, he said.
The scale of the ransomware threat was highlighted last month when a Los Angeles hospital paid almost $17,000 in bitcoins to hackers who disabled its computer network.
References
- ^ FBI (bilbaoya.com)
- ^ computer virus (bilbaoya.com)
- ^ MedStar Health (bilbaoya.com)
- ^ ransomware attack (bilbaoya.com)
- ^ virus (bilbaoya.com)
- ^ told (bilbaoya.com)
- ^ paid (bilbaoya.com)
- ^ in Australia (bilbaoya.com)
- ^ Europe (bilbaoya.com)
- ^ ransomware (bilbaoya.com)
