By REBECCA RUTHERFORD
Los Alamos
For the Los Alamos Daily Post
In case you ever wondered how low cyber criminals are willing to go, in this week’s news they took down, checks notes, a children’s hospital…
Nearly a week after a cyber attack shut down their computer systems, a children’s hospital in Chicago is still trying to restore their computer systems. Lurie Children’s Hospital said the attack shut down its network including phone, email and some other electronic systems.
The hospital remains operational for now, but the outage has made scheduling appointments, and getting medical records and prescription history difficult for doctors and patients.
“We recognize the frustration of not having clarity on when this will be resolved,” Lurie said in a statement posted to its website. “Our investigation remains ongoing and we are working around the clock to resolve this matter.” Lurie said the outage is not affecting most operations, including the emergency room, but patients and doctors are having difficulty accessing electronic medical records.
The hospital first announced the outage Jan. 31, but did not attribute it to a cyber incident until Feb. 4. Dear reader, this is why this journalist is always suspicious when anything has an unexplained “outage”… it’s pretty likely a cyber incident.
Lurie has not released any details on the nature of the incident, whether it is ransomware or something else, but given recent trends it is likely it is a ransomware attack. With all such attacks, the fun is only beginning as employees and patients will likely have to deal with a data breach at some point in the near future from the cyber attack, whether ransomware or otherwise.
Sadly attacks on health infrastructure have become all too common, another cyber attack closed a Chicago hospital in June of 2023. Cyber attacks on hospitals have caused them to be unable to file insurance claims for months, and even forced hospitals in several states to re-route ambulances to other hospitals due to cyber attacks in November of 2023.
The disruption of cyber attacks on healthcare systems has not gone unnoticed by the powers that be. Federal officials and hospitals need to do much more to fight this issue. The Department of Health and Human Services unveiled plans to increase federal funding for poorly funded rural hospitals and impose stricter fines for poor security at health care providers in December.
That said, I don’t see these attacks ending on healthcare anytime soon. Cyber criminals are an unethical lot and would probably sell their mothers on the dark web for the right price, so it’s unsurprising they would target healthcare systems. Up next, orphanages and retirement villages, or so I would guess. Hopefully healthcare systems are increasingly aware of the threat, and will beef up their cyber defenses to prevent more cyber attacks.
