Cyberattack: the hospital of Oloron-Sainte-Marie targeted, the hackers demand 50 000 euros
The hospital in Oloron-Sainte-Marie (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) has been targeted by a cyberattack since Monday. A ransom of 50 000 dollars in bitcoins is requested to restore the computer infrastructure. The staff has taken back the good old papers and pens.
A major cyberattack has hit the hospital in Oloron-Sainte-Marie (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) since Monday, seriously disrupting its computer system, the third in a hospital in a month. This hospital, which employs some 600 people for 321 beds and places in this sub-prefecture, was hit by a "ransomware" attack in which hackers broke into the computer system and then encrypted its files to make them inoperable, demanding a ransom to unlock them.
On the screens of the hospital in Oloron, messages in English appeared demanding a ransom of 50,000 dollars in bitcoins (crypto currency). Since it was spotted on Monday by an engineer in charge of the institution's IT infrastructure, the agents are using paper and pencils.
The cyber attack affects most of the data related to patient health information, which could lead to postponements of some interventions, if not returned to normal quickly, said the management. It also complicates the management - computerized - of stocks of drugs, but without jeopardizing the vaccination campaign against Covid-19, at this stage. In addition, the telephone within the hospital is still working, said the management, which said that an audit of the hospital's computer systems had been conducted, following recent cyberattacks on other institutions.
Third hospital targeted in a month
This is the third cyberattack recorded in a month in the hospital environment after those that paralyzed the hospital centers of Dax (Landes) and Villefranche-sur-Saône (Rhone), February 8 and 15, and following which President Emmanuel Macron has announced a response of one billion euros to strengthen the cybersecurity of sensitive systems.
A complaint was filed with the gendarmerie and the cybercrime unit of the Pau gendarmerie went to the scene, along with agents of the French National Agency for Information Systems Security (Anssi), the country's cybersecurity gendarme.
The Paris public prosecutor's office is seized
An investigation has been opened for attempted extortion, and as in the cases of Dax and Villefranche-sur-Saône, the public prosecutor's office in Pau indicated at the end of the day that it had been relinquished to the cybercrime section of the Paris public prosecutor's office, which has national jurisdiction in this matter.
"We have disconnected all the workstations to limit the losses," explained hospital director Frédéric Lecenne to the daily La République des Pyrénées. "We can recover our networks in 48 hours, as in three months."
Healthcare institutions have become prime targets for the IT threat since the health crisis, "the attack probably making it easier for hospitals to pay the ransom in light of the critical need for business continuity," according to an Anssi report.
Source: AFP
