[BreachExchange] Rouen hospital turns to pen and paper after cyber-attack

[Destry Winant]

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50503841

A cyber-attack on a hospital in Rouen last week caused "very long
delays in care", reports the AFP news agency.

Medical staff at the French city's University Hospital Centre (CHU)
were forced to abandon PCs as ransomware had made them unusable, a
spokesman said.

Instead, staff returned to the "old-fashioned method of paper and
pencil", said head of communications Remi Heym.

No patients were endangered as a result of the cyber-attack, the
hospital said, in a statement published on Facebook.

The 1,300-bed hospital has not revealed details about the strain of
ransomware with which it was infected.

It said servers and many desktop PCs were rendered out of action by
the attack, leaving staff to handle appointments by phone, issuing
written prescriptions and reports.

No medical or personal data has gone missing as a result of the
attack, according to the hospital.

France's national cyber-crime agency, ANSSI, helped limit the scale of
the outbreak, France's Le Monde newspaper reported. The paper reports
that the agency also assisted with cleaning up computers infected by
the virus, re-installing software and recovering encrypted files.

Media captionTechnology explained: what is ransomware?

The hospital stated it would not pay any ransom to have its files
restored, adding that all its systems should be returned to normal by
this weekend.

A formal investigation into who was behind the ransomware has been
initiated by French police.

Le Monde reported that ransomware attacks on French hospitals were
rare, but said two other establishments had been hit in recent years.

Hospitals have become a favourite target of cyber-attackers because
the patient data they hold is highly valuable and the consequences of
the data becoming inaccessible can be life-threatening.

The biggest outbreak was in August this year, which impacted 120
hospitals and offices forming the Ramsay private hospital group. That
organisation reportedly paid the ransom to unlock computers and
restore encrypted files.

In May 2017, a cyber-attack crippled large parts of the NHS - 47
trusts were affected and seven had to temporarily close their doors in
A&E to ambulances.