Stead Fast
Banned
Just saw this pop up on my feed. Apparently demands for money have been made. More in the article:
The article itself
A pretty chilling prospect as the article goes on to talk about the knock-on effect this may have for emergency patients near the hospitals effected.
Edit:
Potentially linked to a wider-scale attack including Telefonica and Santander.
https://www.euroweeklynews.com/3.0.15/news/on-euro-weekly-news/spain-news-in-english/144385-telefonica-allegedly-hacked-and-held-to-ransom
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/telefonica-tells-employees-to-shut-down-computers-amid-massive-ransomware-outbreak/
http://elpais.com/elpais/2017/05/12/inenglish/1494588595_636306.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/world/europe/uk-national-health-service-cyberattack.html
Edit 2:
At least 25 affected according to BBC, Sky News reported live of 40.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-39899646
The article itself
A number of hospitals have been hit by a large scale cyber attack, NHS England has confirmed.
Hospitals across the country appear to have been simultaneously hit by a bug in their IT systems, leading to many diverting emergency patients. NHS England said it was aware of the problem and would release more details soon.
Meanwhile doctors have been posting on Twitter about what has been happening to their systems.
A screen grab of a instant message conversation circulated by one doctor says: ”So our hospital is down ... We got a message saying your computers are now under their control and pay a certain amount of money. And now everything is gone."
A pretty chilling prospect as the article goes on to talk about the knock-on effect this may have for emergency patients near the hospitals effected.
The IT systems of NHS sites across the country appear to have been simultaneously hit, with a pop-up message demanding a ransom in exchange for access to the PCs. NHS England said it was aware of the problem and would release more details soon.
According to reports, affected hospitals include those run by East and North Hertfordshire NHS trust, Barts Health in London, Essex Partnership university NHS trusts, the university hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS foundation trust, Southport and Ormskirk hospital NHS trust and Blackpool teaching hospital NHS foundation trust.
In a message to a Guardian reporter, one NHS IT worker said: ”At approximately 12.30pm we experienced a problem with our email servers crashing. Following this a lot of our clinical systems and patient systems were reported to have gone down.
”A bitcoin virus pop-up message had been introduced on to the network asking users to pay $300 to be able to access their PCs. You cannot get past this screen. This followed with an internal major incident being declared and advised all trust staff to shut down all PCs in the trust and await further instructions.
”This is affecting the east of England and number of other trusts. This is the largest outage of this nature I've seen in the six years I've been employed with the NHS."
Edit:
”The investigation is at an early stage but we believe the malware variant is Wanna Decryptor. At this stage we do not have any evidence that patient data has been accessed. We will continue to work with affected organisations to confirm this.
”NHS Digital is working closely with the National Cyber Security Centre, the Department of Health and NHS England to support affected organisations and to recommend appropriate mitigations.
”This attack was not specifically targeted at the NHS and is affecting organisations from across a range of sectors.
”Our focus is on supporting organisations to manage the incident swiftly and decisively, but we will continue to communicate with NHS colleagues and will share more information as it becomes available."
Potentially linked to a wider-scale attack including Telefonica and Santander.
https://www.euroweeklynews.com/3.0.15/news/on-euro-weekly-news/spain-news-in-english/144385-telefonica-allegedly-hacked-and-held-to-ransom
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/telefonica-tells-employees-to-shut-down-computers-amid-massive-ransomware-outbreak/
http://elpais.com/elpais/2017/05/12/inenglish/1494588595_636306.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/world/europe/uk-national-health-service-cyberattack.html
Edit 2:
At least 25 affected according to BBC, Sky News reported live of 40.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-39899646