Ransomware Is Out of Control, Hits Hospitals, Churches, Schools, Courthouses

[Jack]

Content source

http://news.softpedia.com/news/ransomware-is-out-of-control-hits-hospitals-churches-schools-courthouses-501092.shtml

During the past month, ransomware infections have gotten out of control and have infected not only home users, but many high-profile targets like courthouses, hospitals, schools, and even churches.

After earlier this month, the ransomware infection that paralyzed the Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles made headlines around the world, it appears that many more other public institutions have realized there's no shame in admitting that they've faced a ransomware infection as well.

During the past week, we've seen many public institutions acknowledging similar incidents, something that a couple of years back would never reach the ears of the press.

This may also have something to do with the fact that ransomware infections, as a whole, grew tremendously, and it's now a common occurrence to see even the newest ransomware families possess high-end encryption capabilities.

Ransomware affects public institutions as well, not just regular folks
Probably the most unusual place to find a ransomware infection is a courthouse. Something like this happened at the Arizona Superior Court in Pima County, but sysadmins said that no files containing court information got encrypted during the incident.

Infections were also spotted at two German hospitals, more precisely at the Lukas Hospital in the city of Neuss and the Klinikum Arnsberg hospital in North Rhine-Westphalia. Just like with the LA clinic incident, these infections sent hospitals back a few years, with doctors and nurses having to use pen and paper to manage patients. Also, let's not forget about the ransomware infection that took root at the Whanganui District Health Board in New Zealand.

Read more: Ransomware Is Out of Control, Hits Hospitals, Churches, Schools, Courthouses

 

[frogboy]

It also crippled my Western Australian Government about two weeks ago for a time.

 

[safe1st]

wow I cant say anything, that's brutal...

 

[Rishi]

It is obvious that internet and IT security practices have not been followed in these places, so the risk is not only limited to novice home/business users but any institutions/organization also. Online security is becoming more and more relevant as the ransomeware problem increases.Network administrators can do justice by providing means to spread awareness and employing access restriction/ good backup measures instead of relying more on signature matching against such data destruction attacks.

 

[hjlbx]

LOL... they don't know about HMP.A - so they just don't know any better.

What I would like to know is this - what are their security configs ?

I would bet in some cases essentially nothing.

In other cases, we'd be surprised to see the big names - FireEye, Kaspersky, Symantec, Sophos, HP, IBM, EMC, etc - or whatever...

Just a FYI, SurfRight does have an enterprise division - that's the primary reason Sophos purchased SurfRight.

 

[LabZero]

The problem is conceptual.
The attack techniques are becoming more sophisticated and advanced.
The defense line does not allow the same required security levels and these are the results.

 

[jamescv7]

The problem also where a country is known to be targeted by malicious attacks didn't alarm by any I.T Department or even those persons who operate on the computer maintenance.

One of the reason why Linux is very capable on any business matters, because it minimizes the large chance of infection also a long time for anyone to conduct vulnerability attack since those OS are updated frequently.*

* Proven because I've encountered some stores in my place where Linux already covered and no any malicious attacks nor related issues circulated around.

 

[Entreri]

Unfortunately there will always be novices in any organization. It's not like they used an NSA backdoor.

It is far too elementary IMO for even the average computer user to get infected.