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Massive ransomware attack hits 18 hospitals in Romania
* Romanian authorities announced a “massive” ransomware cyberattack affecting the activities of at least 18 hospitals. The Health information system (HIS) was knocked offline, https://cybernews.com/ informs.
The National Cyber Security Directorate (NCSD) in Romania was notified about a ransomware cyber attack on a service provider for multiple hospitals in the country.
“Currently, a team of NCSD specialists has been dispatched to the scene to investigate the cyber incident. Several hospitals are affected by the attack,” DNC said.
The Romanian Ministry of Healthlisted 18 medical facilities that were affected by the attack. “As a result of the attack, the system is down, files and databases are encrypted,” the Ministry of Health said.
The cyberattack took place on the production servers running HIS IT systems during the night of February 11th to 12th, 2024.
Currently, a team of IT specialists, including cybersecurity experts from NCSD, is investigating the incident and assessing the resumption possibilities. “Exceptional prevention measures were activated” for hospitals unaffected by the attack.
“We recommend that hospital IT teams are not contacted so they can focus on restoring IT services and data! This is the priority at the moment,” the NCSD statement reads.
Dr. Diana Bonto, a spokesperson at Targoviste County Emergency Hospital, said that the system is non-functional, and the hospital cannot access files and databases.
“Medical activities are being carried out under the limitations resulting from the incident,” Bonto said.
At the moment, it remains unclear who is responsible for the cyberattack and whether patients' medical data was stolen.
The websites of some hospitals, such as Fundeni Clinical Institute or Military Emergency Hospital “Dr. Alexandru Gafencu” Constanta, could not be accessed at the time of writing.