The Irish Medical Service was attacked

Earlier, Colonial Pipeline, the largest oil product pipeline transportation company in the United States, was attacked by ransomware, and the company’s oil product transportation system was subsequently taken offline.

This led to serious supply problems in the transportation of refined oil in most areas of the United States. US President Joe Biden also declared a state of emergency in the United States to deal with the crisis. After being attacked by ransomware, Colonial Pipeline was found to have paid a ransom of $5 million to the hacker.

Recently, the Irish health service hit by a very sophisticated ransomware attack. The attacker stated that they have been lurking in the agency for two weeks, collecting all the data before encrypting it and disrupting its operations.

After the attack, many hospitals had to rely on handwritten notes to maintain their operations, because doctors could not read patients’ previous medical records through medical service agencies.

After the attack caused the national medical service to be paralyzed, the Office of the Prime Minister of Ireland also urgently held a press conference to give an official response to the matter.

Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Micheál Martin said that the Irish government will not pay any ransom to hackers and that they will find a way to recover the data themselves to solve the problem.

The Minister of Health Services of Ireland stated that it may take several weeks to restore the data. At present, all information systems have been shut down to prevent attackers from continuing to attack.

The good news is that the Irish medical services have daily backups of such systems and data, and these backups are independent so they have not been compromised by hackers.

It’s just that the radiology, oncology, and obstetrics, and gynecology departments of medical institutions rely heavily on information systems, and doctors must obtain historical data to provide better diagnoses.

Via: ZDNet