Woman Died After Ransomware Attack Sent Her To A Remote Hospital

A woman in need of medical treatment for a fatal condition lost her life after the nearest hospital in Duesseldorf, Germany fell victim of a ransomware attack, forcing the patient to seek help from a farther facility.

The authority is conducting an investigation to find out the culprit, who will likely be charged with negligent homicide, behind this attack.

The incident took place last Friday when the woman, who was in critical condition, was refused by the near Duesseldorf University Hospital since the facility was crippled by the ransomware attack.

The patient was rushed to another hospital 32 km away, leading to a 1-hour delay in treatment. She passed away not long after that.

Little do we know about who is behind the attack at this point, which occurred last Thursday, a day before the death.

According to a report of the justice minister of North Rhine-Westphalia state, the ransomware attack encrypts the servers of 30 hospitals with a message telling the Heinrich Heine University to get in touch with the attacker(s).

After learning that the attack has hampered a hospital for critical patients, not Heinrich Heine University from the Duesseldorf police, the hackers reportedly provided the decryption key for the encrypted servers without asking for the ransom to be paid. As stated by the justice minister, the attackers were out of reach.

Officials from the hospital said on Twitter that the attack occurred when hackers exploited a vulnerability in commercial add-on software, which the post didn’t mention its name.

According to BSI, the agency in charge of cybersecurity warnings, the attackers used the CVE-2019-19781 vulnerability in the Citrix application delivery controller.

Citrix hasn’t commented anything when asked whether the vulnerability was among the entryways for the hackers to attack the hospitals’ servers.

Federal prosecutors made public that it was the various vulnerabilities reportedly used by Chinese hackers to penetrate software and game makers.

Last week’s attack isn’t hackers’ first attempt to target hospitals. In 2019, 10 medical centers, seven in Australia and three in the U.S were under attack.

Three days after the incident, three U.S hospitals reportedly paid the hackers to get their systems back to work.

>>> Hackers Attacked PM Narendra Modi’s Twitter To Ask For Cryptocurrency