It may be the first death directly connected to a cybersecurity attack.
During a ransomware attack on Duesseldorf University Hospital, a woman in Germany died in what may be the first death directly linked to a hospital cyber – attack. Because of the assault, the hospital did not take any emergency patients, and the woman was transferred to a health care center about 20 miles away. The Associated Press, German news outlet NTV, and others reported.
Hackers targeted 30 hospital servers earlier this month, encrypting them and leaving a digital note behind to help anyone reading it to be in touch.
The note was addressed to the University of Heinrich Heine, assumed to have been the intended target, but the hack took the associated University Clinic of Dusseldorf offline.
According to a report from the local justice minister, the police contacted the hackers to inform them that they had targeted the hospital rather than the university, and the hackers then issued the decryption keys for the servers.
Reportedly, the suspected hackers are no longer accessible, said the justice minister.
Threats Are Nearing The Brink
To date, the ransomware strain or the attackers involved in the infection, which started last Thursday, some 24 hours before the death occurred, is little publicly understood. The attack encrypted about 30 hospital servers and left a note instructing the Heinrich Heine University. The Düsseldorf hospital is connected, or contact the perpetrators, a report from the North Rhine-Westphalia State Justice Minister said.
Eventually, the Düsseldorf police approached the perpetrators and told them that the attack had reached a hospital treating emergency patients, not the university. The attackers have reportedly withdrawn the ransom demand and issued a decryption key to access the servers. The justice minister report said that the attackers are no longer reachable.
The Threat Is Real – Future-proofing cybersecurity is the only prevention and cure.
This is not a fable, but definite proof of ransomware’s rapid spread. As the world evolves more and more digital, each one of us could fall prey to an attack at any point in time.
And what would we do to protect and safeguard ourselves from a conniving threat like that?
The best approach is to improve the cybersecurity methodologies of our organizations! Only think of Dusseldorf hospital-would, they had become a suspect if they were warned for the first time they had focused on enhancing their data security? Maybe they don’t.
Would you like to get more advice on this? Feel free to get in touch with Cybernetic Global Intelligence (CGI), a cybersecurity firm, which provides effective cybersecurity solutions with a timely review.