From infosecurity-magazine.com
Patient care at a large hospital in northern France has suffered considerably after a major ransomware attack at the weekend, according to local reports.
The University Hospital Center (CHU) of Rouen was hit by the malware last Friday and severely disrupted all weekend, with national investigators called in.
A communications director from the hospital, which has over 1300 beds and 8000 staff, told AFP that the incident had forced staff back to using pen and paper.
“This resulted in very long delays in care, even if there was no danger to the health of hospitalized patients,” he’s reported as adding.
The incident has echoes of the WannaCry attack of 2017 which severely affected the UK’s National Health Service (NHS). An investigation into the outages claimed it led to the cancellation of an estimated 19,000 operations and appointments, affecting around a third of trusts in England.
It is calculated to have cost the NHS £92 million, in lost access to systems and emergency IT support.
“Sadly, the targeting of hospitals with ransomware is a growing trend; earlier this year seven hospitals in Australia were also impacted by ransomware,” argued Cesar Cerrudo, CTO at IOActive.