American hospitals are being targeted in a wave of ransomware attacks as covid-19 infections in the US break records and push the country’s health infrastructure to the limit. As reports emerge of attacks that interrupted health care in at least six US hospitals, experts and government officials say they expect the impact to worsen—and warn that the attacks could potentially threaten patients’ lives.
“I think we’re at the beginning of this story,” said Mike Murray, CEO at the health-care security firm Scope Security. “These guys are moving very fast and very aggressively. These folks seem to be trying to collect as much money as possible very quickly. I think it will be tomorrow or over the weekend before the real scale of this is understood. Compromises are still ongoing.”
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and the Department of Health and Human Services published a dramatic warning on the night of Wednesday, October 28, about “imminent” ransomware threats to American hospitals. The agencies held a conference call with health-care security executives earlier that day to emphasize the need to prioritize this threat. Ransomware is a type of hack in which an attacker uses malware to hijack a victim’s system and demands payment before handing back control.
Hospitals including St. Lawrence Health System in New York, Sonoma Valley Hospital in California, and Sky Lakes Medical Center in Oregon have all said they’ve been hit by ransomware. A doctor told ransomware hospitals coronavirus spikes
