Tag Archive for: Clinic

Barcelona’s Hospital Clinic ransomware cyberattack


A ransomware cyberattack on Barcelona’s Hospital Clinic is said to have originated ‘from outside Spain’.

 

According to two experts today, Monday, March 6, the ransomware cyberattack that hit Barcelona’s Hospital Clinic yesterday, Sunday 5, originated from outside Spain. This was announced in a press conference by Sergi Marcen, the Secretary for Telecommunications and Digital Transformation of the medical facility.

His claim was backed up by both Dr Antoni Castells, the hospital’s medical director, and Tomas Roy, the general director of the Catalan Cybersecurity Agency. The incident: “is not an attack that has come from the Spanish State, it comes from outside Spain”, they stated jointly.

The three men described the attack ascomplex and transversal’ and explained that it came from a cybercrime company called Ransom House. “Normally, Ransom House carries out these types of attacks in exchange for money, but so far they have not been in contact”, said Marcen.

These attacks normally consist of disabling a computer system in exchange for a payment to recover the information, but Marcen assured that “there will be no negotiation to pay”.

As a result of the attack, about 150 elective surgeries, 500 extractions and some 300 external consultations are still unscheduled. Urgent cases such as heart attacks or strokes will be redirected to other medical facilities. “We cannot access the information of the patients”, they explained.

Sunday’s attack affected communication between hospital departments and for now, it is not possible to access histories and other patient data, although Castells has assured that this information “is not affected”.

It is not yet known to what extent the cyberattack could have affected the data, although they assured that “it has been a complex attack, we have evidence that data has been leaked, and we are in the process of analyzing it”.

Castells warned that they do not know exactly when they will be able to recover full activity. “The contingency plan allows us to work many days like this, but we hope it won’t be necessary”. As of midday on Sunday, the centre launched the contingency plan, because it…

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Data Brokers Track Abortion Clinic Visits for Anyone to Buy


If the war in Ukraine and Russia’s still-unfolding atrocities there didn’t offer enough fodder for doomscrolling, this week supplied a new dose of domestic crisis: A leaked Supreme Court draft decision that would overturn Roe v. Wade, demolishing a ruling that has served as a cornerstone of reproductive rights for nearly five decades. And this crisis, too, will play out in the digital realm as much as the physical and legal ones.

WIRED’s Lily Hay Newman responded to the news with a guide to protecting your privacy if you’re seeking an abortion in a near-future world in which Roe has in fact been overturned. As right-wing pundits demand the Supreme Court leaker’s prosecution, meanwhile, we analyzed the laws concerning leaks of unclassified government information like a draft court ruling and found that there’s no clear statute criminalizing that sort of information sharing. And law professor Amy Gajda walked us through the history of Supreme Court information leaks, which stretches back hundreds of years.

As Russia’s war in Ukraine grinds on, we looked at how small, consumer-grade drones are offering a defensive tool to Ukrainians that they’re exploiting as in no other war in history. And further abroad in India, a battle is taking shape between VPN firms and the Indian government, which is demanding they hand over users’ data. Meanwhile, the country’s new “super app,” Tata Neu, has sparked user privacy concerns.

And there’s more. As we do every week, we’ve rounded up all the news that we didn’t break or cover in-depth. Click on the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.

If Roe‘s precedent ceases to protect people seeking abortions across the United States, the question of who can digitally surveil those seeking abortions and abortion providers—and how to evade that surveillance—will become a civil liberties battle of the highest urgency. This week, Motherboard’s Joseph Cox fired the opening salvos of that battle with a series of stories about data brokers who offer to sell location data that include individuals’ visits to abortion clinics and Planned Parenthood offices, an egregious form of surveillance capitalism with immediate human consequences….

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Nearly 73,500 patients’ data affected in ransomware attack on eye clinic in S’pore, Tech News News & Top Stories


SINGAPORE – A ransomware attack has affected the personal data and clinical information of nearly 73,500 patients of a private eye clinic.

The information included names, addresses, identity card numbers, contact details and clinical information, said Eye & Retina Surgeons (ERS) on Wednesday (Aug 25).

But the clinic said that no credit card or bank account information was accessed or compromised.

It added that its IT system has been restored securely, and its IT providers have completed a thorough check of the clinic’s system, reformatted servers and run anti-virus scans on all computer terminals.

Measures will be taken to prevent the breach from recurring, ERS said.

ERS had fallen prey to a sophisticated ransomware cyber attack by hackers on Aug 6. Such attacks usually involve locking up data until victims pay the hackers.

Servers and several computer terminals at the clinic’s Camden branch were affected, but its IT system at the Novena branch was not.

While no sensitive data has been leaked publicly for now, the clinic said that it will monitor the situation closely.

ERS said that for data security reasons, it maintains active medical records separately on a cloud-based system, so they were not accessed or compromised in the cyber attack. Clinical operations were not affected too.

The clinic said it is now in the process of informing patients of the cyber attack.

The police, Personal Data Protection Commission – which said it is seeking more information from ERS – and the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore (CSA) have been informed.

ERS is also working with CSA and the Ministry of Health to investigate the root causes of the attack and, together with security experts, is also trying to identify potential areas the company can better secure.

The clinic claimed that it uses “reputable and established external IT service providers to advise on and maintain its IT systems, and subscribes to appropriate anti-virus and other protective software, which are regularly updated”.

“ERS regrets this breach and wishes to assure its patients that it takes patient confidentiality very seriously,” the clinic said, adding that it will continue to do everything it can to protect and secure…

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U.S. accuses Chinese-born researcher at Cleveland Clinic of ties to Chinese spying – Reuters

  1. U.S. accuses Chinese-born researcher at Cleveland Clinic of ties to Chinese spying  Reuters
  2. Former Cleveland Clinic researcher arrested over undisclosed ties to Chinese tech espionage program: 4 details  Becker’s Hospital Review
  3. Chinese-born Researcher Arrested in US for Spying, Stealing American Scientific Advances  News18
  4. Chinese-Born Researcher at Cleveland Clinic Accused of Fraud, Links to Espionage  Breitbart
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“china espionage” – read more