The FBI, Department of Health and Human Services, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency announced on Wednesday, October 25th, that the threat of ransomware attacks on health care providers is growing. While no specific mention was made as to the source of the threat, it is known, based on a report from Reuters, that attacks had already been observed in the states of New York, Oregon, and Washington.
The announcement included specific reference to the “Ryuk” ransomware. “Ryuk is a relatively young ransomware family that was discovered in August 2018 and has made significant gains in popularity in 2020. The increase of remote and mobile workforces appears to have increased its prevalence, resulting not only in financial losses, but also impacting health care services with attacks on hospitals,” says Dmytriy Ayrepetov, from security company SonicWall, to Vox.
A report from SonicWall also identified Ryuk as being the tool used in roughly a third of ransomware attacks over the last year, including a recent attack on Universal Health Services, which has about 250 facilities in the United States.
Source:
https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/10/29/21540039/hospital-ransomware-coronavirus-hacking-ryuk-malware
