FBI warns that hackers are targeting hospitals while coronavirus admissions surge
Source: Vox
As though hospitals across America didn’t have enough to handle with the recent resurgence of Covid-19 causing overflows and straining their resources, they’re now the possible targets of a new onslaught of ransomware attacks.
An alert from the FBI, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said on Wednesday that there is an imminent threat of ransomware attacks on American hospitals and health care providers. Ransomware is malware that locks up a system’s computers and data until a ransom is paid. The alert didn’t specify who the agencies thought might be responsible for the attacks, but HHS has said in the past that the ransomware associated with the current threat is linked to Russian criminal groups. The alert also didn’t say how many — if any — health care institutions had already been affected, but Reuters reports that there were attacks in New York, Oregon, and Washington state.
The threat identified by the FBI, CISA, and HHS comes from the “Ryuk” ransomware, which emerged in mid-2018 and has cost companies and municipalities at least tens of millions of dollars in ransom payments, in addition to whatever costs were incurred for IT fixes and lost business.
“Ryuk is a relatively young ransomware family that was discovered in August 2018 and has made significant gains in popularity in 2020,” Dmitriy Ayrapetov, of internet security company SonicWall, said in a statement to Recode. “The increase of remote and mobile workforces appears to have increased its prevalence, resulting not only in financial losses, but also impacting health care services with attacks on hospitals.”
Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/fbi-warns-that-hackers-are-targeting-hospitals-while-coronavirus-admissions-surge/ar-BB1aw7r9?li=BBnbcA1&ocid=DELLDHP
probably Trump's buddies the Russian Mafia.
= new reply since forum marked as read
