Tag Archive for: san

Cal. Dept. of Public Health – NBC 7 San Diego

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On Friday, the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) described the ongoing situation at Scripps Heath as a case of “ransomware attacks.”

Ransomware typically works by introducing software that encrypts a user’s data and holds the decryption key until the ransom is paid. Once that happens, a typical recourse is to reformat and restore the system from backups, a SDSU cyber warfare and cyber terrorism expert Steven Andrés told NBC in 2018

The local health-care provider, which operates five hospitals in San Diego, along with a series of clinics, was hit by a cyberattack over the weekend. Patients and staffers have been unable to access records, email and other technology for six days.

NBC 7’s Dana Griffin spoke to a patient whose wait for surgery has been extended by the cyberattack.

During that time, Scripps Health and county officials have been tight-lipped about the situation, other than to say that experts were working on the situation and that governmental agencies were aware of the incident. Scripps said it had proactively taken part of it’s systems down: “Upon discovering the outage, we immediately initiated an investigation and took steps to contain the outage, including by taking a significant portion of our network offline as a proactive security measure.”

In that same statement, Scripps described what was happening as “a network outage that resulted in a disruption to our IT systems.” On Friday, however, an official with the California Department of Public Health sent NBC 7 the following statement:

“The ransomware attacks were reported to the department. As required by state and federal law, hospitals are required to provide proper patient care at all times, including in any emergency situation. CDPH is actively monitoring the hospitals impacted. These hospitals are operational and caring for patients using appropriate emergency protocols in inpatient areas of the hospital. The department has authority to involuntarily suspend facility licenses in extreme circumstances that pose immediate risk to patient safety. Facilities reliance on emergency protocols does not automatically warrant such action.“

Scripps Health…

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San Diego Family Care Center Discloses Possible Data Breach

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San Diego Family Care’s Linda Vista Health Center. Photo by Doug Gates

San Diego Family Care announced Friday it has alerted current and former patients and employees about a computer security breach that may have involved their personal information.

Though there is no evidence that anyone’s personal information was misused, the health services provider said it was advising potentially impacted people about the issue, and steps they can take to protect themselves, as a precaution.

The potentially affected data includes names; dates of birth; Social Security numbers or other government identifiers; financial account numbers; medical diagnosis or treatment information; health-insurance information; and client identification numbers, according to SDFC officials.

The issue came to light in December, when officials with SDFC and its business associate, Health Center Partners of Southern California, became aware that their information-technology hosting provider had experienced a data-security irregularity that resulted in the encryption of certain data.

In response, the technology company took steps to secure and restore its systems and launched an investigation with the assistance of computer forensics experts, who determined that some data may have been accessed by an unauthorized party.

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Three from UC San Diego Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

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Three portraits, from left: Ananda Goldrath, Eileen Myles and Stefan Savage

From left: Ananda Goldrath, Eileen Myles and Stefan Savage are joining the ranks of fellows of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Three members of the University of California San Diego community, including two professors and one professor emeritus, have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences—one of the oldest and most esteemed honorary societies in the nation. 

Ananda Goldrath, Eileen Myles and Stefan Savage are among the Academy’s 2021 class of 252 members. They join fellow 2021 classmates who are artists, scholars, scientists and leaders in the public, non-profit and private sectors, including: civil rights lawyer and scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw; computer scientist Fei-Fei Li; composer, songwriter, and performer Robbie Robertson; and media entrepreneur and philanthropist Oprah Winfrey. 

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences has honored exceptionally accomplished individuals and engaged them in advancing the public good for more than 240 years. Professor Walter Munk was the first UC San Diego faculty member elected to the Academy. Since then, more than 80 faculty from disciplines that span the entire campus have received this prestigious honor. 

“This year, our faculty are being recognized for three vastly different fields of study: immunology, literature, and cybersecurity,” said UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla. “Having the oldest and most distinguished American national academy honor the career accomplishments of these prestigious faculty both honors their individual successes and spotlights the breadth of expertise and influence of our Triton faculty. UC San Diego’s well-established prowess in science, technology and art offers a truly well-rounded experience for our students, our researchers and our collaborative faculty.”

In the statement announcing this year’s new Academy members, David Oxtoby, President of the American Academy said, “The past year has been replete with evidence of how things can get worse; this is an opportunity to illuminate the importance of art, ideas, knowledge, and leadership that can make a better world.”
Following is more information about each of UC San Diego’s newest Academy…

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How the FBI Finally Got Into the San Bernardino Shooter’s iPhone

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As the Biden administration moves on an ever-growing list of policy initiatives, the White House issued sanctions this week for a slate of Russian misdeeds, including interference in the 2020 election, the poisoning of dissident Aleksey Navalny, and the SolarWinds hacking spree that swept United States government agencies and many private-sector companies. The retaliatory move is complicated when it comes to SolarWinds, though, because it comprised the sort of espionage operation that would typically fall within geopolitical norms. 

Elsewhere in the US government, the Justice Department took a drastic step this week to halt a Chinese hacking spree by authorizing the FBI to obtain a warrant and then directly delete attackers’ hacking infrastructure from hundreds of victims’ internal systems. Many in the security community lauded the effort, but the move also stoked some controversy given the precedent it could set for future US government actions that might be more invasive.

Over in the fraught world of internet-of-things security, researchers published findings on Tuesday that more than 100 million embedded devices and IT management servers are potentially vulnerable to attack, because of flaws in fundamental networking protocols. The devices are made by numerous vendors and used in environments from regular offices to health care and critical infrastructure, potentially exposing those networks to attack.

If you’re trying to lock your accounts down and reduce your reliance on passwords, we have a guide to alternatives that’ll walk you through on a number of platforms. And if you’re feeling a general sense of existential dread about all manner of threats, you’re not alone—the US Intelligence Community seems to be feeling the same way.

And there’s more. Each week we round up all the news WIRED didn’t cover in depth. Click on the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.

In 2016 the US government famously tried to compel Apple to unlock the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters. The case could have set a precedent that the government could demand that tech companies undermine the security protections in their products or insert “backdoors.” (Several…

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