Ireland condemns 'criminal act' against the sick after second cyber attack on health and wellbeing system
19 May, 2021
A cyber attack against Ireland's health program was referred to as a “serious criminal act” against sick people, amid fears confidential patient data could possibly be leaked online.
Ireland's Department of Well being on Sunday revealed it became the next institution in the country to get targeted by a ransomware attack after computers at the Health Provider Executive were forced offline by criminal hackers on Friday.
The director-general of the HSE, Paul Reid, defined the incident as “serious criminal act” and warned it could cost "tens of an incredible number of euros" to fix the problem.
Authorities have up to now refused to pay the reported $20 million ransom demanded by the hackers - a good decision which Mr Reid said he agreed with.
“It is correct because if you don’t pay they will move on, and can probably attack different departments,” he told Ireland's express broadcaster RTE. “If you carry out pay them you can’t trust them not to keep coming back for more”.
The hack has led to sampling capacity in Irish laboratories being reduced to 10 % after the HSE's IT system was turn off.
General Practitioners have already been told not to send any samples to HSE labs unless it really is "essential to decisions that must definitely be made immediately", according to an official letter seen by RTE. Urgent samples should be checked after the system is restored to complete capacity.
Minister of Point out for Public Procurement and eGovernment Ossian Smyth said the criminal gang have been struggling to access backup servers, as a result there's been no data loss.
"As far as I understand we have no idea of any server where we have lost data. We've the backups, and so far, we have no idea of any data reduction," he said.
If you conduct pay them you can’t trust them never to keep coming back for more
Authorities come to mind hackers could publish the stolen info on the dark internet. However, Mr Smyth said most of the information was administrative and that medical data used by hospitals was not compromised.
As the Covid-19 vaccination programme was not directly affected and the Health Service Executive (HSE) restored its test and tracing system within hours, hospital appointments have already been cancelled across all outpatient services.
Attacks using ransomware, a good form of malicious software program that encrypts a good victim's files, have been on the rise recently.
Following the attacker has control of the computer system, they demand a ransom from the victim to restore access to the info.
Source: www.thenationalnews.com
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