Pierluigi Paganini
July 03, 2024
It has happened again, another US healthcare organization suffered a security breach, this time the victim is the Fairfield Memorial Hospital in Illinois.
Fairfield Memorial Hospital is a not-for-profit critical access hospital located in Fairfield, Illinois. It has 25 acute-care beds and a workforce of over 400 employees.
It offers a wide range of medical services, including Emergency Services, General Surgical Services, Intensive Care Unit (ICU), Medical Surgical Unit, Orthopedic Surgical Services, and Urgent Care.
The hospital is fully accredited and has been recognized for its quality of care, with high patient experience and medical/surgical ICU ratings.
The Lockbit ransomware gang claimed the hack of the healthcare structure and added it to its Tor leak site.
The extortion group claimed the theft of data and announced it would leak it on July 17, 2024.
Unfortunately, the ransomware group claimed the hack of other hospitals as reported by researchers at Hack Manack. The extortion group also claimed the hack of the Merryman House Domestic Crisis Center, and the Florida Department of Health.
“Today, cybercriminals have hit rock bottom, claiming to have attacked Fairfield Memorial Hospital, Merryman House Domestic Crisis Center, and the Florida Department of Health. What makes the situation critical is not only the highly sensitive data being stolen but also the repercussions that a ransomware attack can have on critical infrastructures, such as hospitals, which put people’s lives at risk. Hackers targeting these infrastructures are no longer just money-hungry “nerds”; they are becoming murderers.” wrote the experts.
This week Wayne Memorial Hospital in Pennsylvania was the victim of a cyber attack, Monti gang claimed to have hacked the healthcare infrastructure.
Healthcare infrastructure in the US continues to be under attack, in February the Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago took IT systems offline after a cyberattack. The security incident severely impacted normal operations also causing the delay of medical care.
Lurie Children’s Hospital is one of the top pediatric hospitals in the United States.
In early November 2023, the Cogdell Memorial Hospital (Scurry County Hospital District) announced it was experiencing a computer network incident that prevented the hospital from accessing some of its systems and severely limiting the operability of its phone system. The hospital immediately removed network connectivity and continued to provide most routine services.
The facility operates as a Critical Access Hospital and a Rural Health Clinic serving rural West Texas.
In November 2023, the Lorenz extortion group leaked the data stolen from the Texas-based Cogdell Memorial Hospital.
Cyber attacks against hospitals are very dangerous, and despite major ransomware gangs imposing restrictions on their affiliates to avoid targeting them, many incidents have recently made headlines.
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