The developers of the vulnerability Ryuk ransomware have attacked several hospitals in the USA in the past few days. They may even want to blackmail hundreds of healthcare institutes.
Hospitals In USA Are Exposed To Cyber Attacks
The number of people with corona in the USA is increasing again. US hospitals are now also exposed to a wave of cyber attacks. FBI warned on Thursday night of ongoing activities with the Ryuk ransomware. Such ransomware encrypts the content of PC and demands a ransom with the promise of releasing the information after paying the required sums. “CISA, FBI, and HHS have credible information of an increased and imminent cybercrime threat to US hospitals and health care providers,” the agencies said in their warning.
Affected hospitals can usually continue to work, but under considerably more difficult situations: some patients have to be relocated and surgeries are postponed. Security researchers suspect a Russian hacker group behind Ryuk. The exact extent of the current cyber attacks on hospitals remained unclear. According to media news, activities in some states were affected.
US authorities believe that six hospitals were attacked by the cyber group on the same day. Most hackers do not want to target hospitals. There is a line and they do not want to cross it. However, this group has no problem with it. According to online sources, the hackers even wanted to place Ryuk in hundreds of medical institutes. The number of new pandemic infections in the country reached almost 80,000 again on Wednesday. Just last week, a record was reached with more than 80,000 infections in one day. Most states have seen an increase.
While cyber attacks on hospitals are common, the experience has shown that they are not attacked more frequently than targets in other sectors. There were fewer cyber activities on hospitals at the start of the pandemic after many hackers stated they would avoid them. Now the Ryuk developers have returned from the summer break and are targeting hospitals along with other fields. The increased interest in these ransomware is largely due to the action on US hospitals a few weeks ago, which hit many hospitals at once. But only because they were all related. In other words, the incident a few weeks ago was an attack that affected a few institutions.
