Another hospital in the United States has fallen victim to a virus bringing their services to a halt. MedStar Hospital Center, located in Washington, noticed the virus intrusion early Monday morning, resulting in email services being shut down, and having no access to their vast database of patient records. This matter has piqued the interest of the FBI, who are currently investigating the matter to determine whether or not Bitcoin ransomware is involved in this attack.
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Given the number of hospitals being infected by Bitcoin ransomware over the past few months, it only seems to make sense this issue plaguing the MedStar Washington Hospital Center should be classified in the same category. However, it remains unclear as to whether or not Bitcoin ransomware is the cause of this attack, as there has not been an official statement just yet.
What we do know is how no information appears to be stolen from the hospital database, which is cause for a sigh of relief. Healthcare institutions have a vast amount of personal details about their patients, and all of these details could be of high value to individual internet criminals. Luckily, this is not the case here, or so it would seem.
MedStar has to be applauded for their course of action, as the decision was made to shut down all system interfaces. Doing so effectively cuts all access paths for this virus to spread itself through the entire hospital IT system. That being said, all of the clinical facilities will remain open although there will be some delays due to staff reverting to paper records for the time being.
Keeping in mind how MedStar operates ten different hospitals, as well as […]
