A number of major hospitals in London, including King’s College Hospital and Guy’s and St Thomas’, have been hit by a cyber attack. Hackers managed to hold pathology systems hostage preventing certain care from being carried out.
The hack was reported on by several British newspapers including the Guardian.
Ransomware via Synnovis Systems
All of the affected hospitals were working with the Synnovis pathology system. It seems that the hackers managed to install software on Synnovis’ servers. This allowed them to encrypt the systems and ask for a ransom to restore these servers. It is not known if the hackers were paid.
In addition to the hospitals, there were also problems at some GP practices in London that work with the Synnovis system.
A spokesperson for Synnovis put out a statement that the company has put IT specialists on the case to find out exactly what happened. The NHS (National Health Service) has indicated that they are currently working with the National Cyber Security Centre to find out what happened and where it went wrong.
Impact on Hospitals
Hospitals report that the cyber attack has caused major problems. For example, the attack made it difficult to perform blood transfusions and view test results. Some appointments had to be rescheduled and some patients were referred to other hospitals.
However, the hospitals do indicate that critical care and emergency rooms continued as usual.
Healthcare Targeted by Ransomware
Hospitals and other healthcare facilities are increasingly being targeted by hackers. Because of the enormous impact a hack in healthcare can have, it is important to properly secure these systems. Although in this case there does not appear to have been any major impact on patients, the horror scenario of an attack like this is, of course, that it can have life-threatening consequences.
Precisely to prevent patients from being affected by a hack, hospitals will be more willing to pay in the event of a ransomware attack. This makes them the perfect target for ruthless hackers.
