Ryuk Ransomware operators continue to target hospitals during COVID19 outbreak

Operators behind the Ryuk Ransomware continue to target hospitals even as these organizations are involved in the fight against the Coronavirus pandemic.

The threat actors behind the infamous Ryuk Ransomware continue to target hospitals, even as they are involved in containing the Coronavirus outbreak.

The decision of the operators is not aligned with principal ransomware gangs that have announced they will no longer target health and medical organizations during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Last week, experts at BleepingComputer contacted various ransomware operators, and some of them like DoppelPaymer and Maze groups announced that they would no target healthcare organizations during the pandemic.

Ryuk goes against the tide and continues to target the hospitals, the group never responded to the questions of BleepingComputer researchers.

“Since then, BleepingComptuer has learned that Ryuk continues to target hospitals even while they are struggling to keep people alive during the Coronavirus pandemic.” reported BleepingComputer.

PeterM from Sophos confirmed that he is aware of a US health care provider that was hit with the Ryuk ransomware.

“I can confirm that #Ryuk ransomware are still targeting
hospitals despite the global pandemic. I’m looking at a US health care provider at the moment who were targeted overnight. Any HC providers reading this, if you have a TrickBot infection get help dealing with it ASAP.” said PeterM.

“Looks like a typical Ryuk attack at the moment, they deployed the ransomware with PsExec.”

The popular malware researcher Vitali Kremez confirmed that the Ryuk ransomware was employed in attacks against ten healthcare organizations.

According to BleepingComputer, the Ryuk ransomware infected a hospital in one of the countries most impacted by the COVID19 outbreak.

Threat actors could make the COVID19 pandemic worse with malware attacks on health organizations.

A couple of weeks ago, a COVID-19 testing centre was hit by a cyberattack, leading to a disruption in the proper functioning of the hospital. In the context of a global sanitary crisis due to a pandemic, the risk of cyberattack must be given close attention by hospitals and healthcare organisations.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – coronavirus, Ryuk)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.