Ransomware in Ireland behind computer attack on healthcare

This is one of the most serious computer threats to businesses and institutions. A new ransomware attack was launched on Friday, May 14 against the Irish Public Health Service (Health Service Executive, HSE). As a result, he had to shut down his entire computer system “Important” Cyber ​​attack.

“There is an attack ransomware [rançongiciel] HSE is important in computer systems. As a precaution, we shut down all our IT systems to protect them from this attack and to allow us to fully assess the situation with our own security partners. ”, a The organization tweeted.

Vaccinations continue

“This is a very serious issue.”HSE Chief Executive Paul Reid spoke about Public Broadcaster RTE. “We have taken precautionary measures to shut down many of our key systems to protect them.”, He explained. Mr Reid says the attack focuses on accessing data stored on central servers.

HSE apologized for the inconvenience caused to the patients and clarified that the immunizations were not affected “It simply came to our notice then[aient] As expected “. The Kovid-19 vaccine is currently open to people over the age of 50 in Ireland. The disease killed 4,937 people.

Rotonda Maternity in Dublin has warned that all patient visits will be canceled except for women who are at least 36 weeks pregnant. “Due to a serious computer problem”. Fergal Malone, who is in charge of this maternity unit, explained to RTE, “Computers connected to electronic health records are the problem”, They added.

Many victims

Cyber ​​attacks using ransomware are a phenomenon that has exploded in recent times. On Thursday evening after a paralysis last weekend, the Colonial Pipeline, the operator of the giant American oil pipeline, restarted its entire system.

Grudge is a virus that locks up the computers and computer networks of victim companies. All files on infected computers are encrypted, meaning they are unreadable and unusable by the user. The operators of this malware demanded a ransom by leaving a note on the victims’ computers: in exchange for millions of dollars in ransom, they promised to send a decryption key that would allow the victims to recover. Use of their network.