Hollywood hospital pays ransomware attackers $17,000 to release its systems

[cliffordcooley]

What about sophisticated enough to count how many machines were infected? 17,000 at 500 a piece would be 34 machines.

 

[cartera]

What about sophisticated enough to count how many machines were infected? 17,000 at 500 a piece would be 34 machines.

Didn't think about it from that angle either.

 

[Arturo]

You cannot be so bad. It's terrible, specially with a hospital.

 

[Mister_K]

How is bitcoin still a thing?

if people trade in it, its still a thing. Not a hard concept actually.

 

[MannerMauler]

How can you work with computers in a hospital and not be trained to tell what malicious links and stuff would look like? thats kinda part of the job description. Theyre lucky this wasnt alot worse.

unfortunately people don't know. I think the bigger issue here is the hospitals lack of a comprehensive backup/ restore solution. An offsite backup could have fixed this in hours instead of days and $17k.

As much I agree with you, there is a strand of cryptolocker that targets the backup first and everything else later. As such, the only way to keep backups from getting encrypted is to keep them off the network. A local school my dad works at was hit and by the time they had realized what had happened and stopped further encryption, there was only one surviving backup, luckily only a few days old.

 

[DJMIKE25]

What is also strange is that they knew they had infected the hospital, and that they don't have disaster recovery policies in place. They also knew to up the ransom to crazy amounts, Usually the payment is £500 from my experience. Sounds like a bit of an inside job maybe or a disgruntled ex employee.

Exactly, I'm in shock that a hospital has no DR policy in place.

 

[captaincranky]

if people trade in it, its still a thing. Not a hard concept actually.

Well, online gambling is a thing too. Some people make a living at it, while others lose their homes to it.

Embracing the pure fantasy that zero's and ones on somebody's HDD to have a value beyond what that of salable information or records might carry, is ludicrous.But, in a twisted culture where people will trade real life belongings and money, for "goods, 'real estate', weapons, and/or services", in the cyber world, I suppose the bitcoin delusion, is the expected paradigm.

I know the tooth fairy doesn't even trade in Bitcoin, and that's plenty enough justification for me to stay away from it...

 

[Phr3d]

if people trade in it, its still a thing. Not a hard concept actually.

I know the tooth fairy doesn't even trade in Bitcoin, and that's plenty enough justification for me to stay away from it...

ahhh durn, was toothfairy.ru,shut down?

 

[captaincranky]

ahhh durn, was toothfairy.ru,shut down?

No, but I think they're going to be forced to change their domain to "toothfairy.xxx".

 

[Mister_K]

Well, online gambling is a thing too. Some people make a living at it, while others lose their homes to it.

Embracing the pure fantasy that zero's and ones on somebody's HDD to have a value beyond what that of salable information or records might carry, is ludicrous.But, in a twisted culture where people will trade real life belongings and money, for "goods, 'real estate', weapons, and/or services", in the cyber world, I suppose the bitcoin delusion, is the expected paradigm.

I know the tooth fairy doesn't even trade in Bitcoin, and that's plenty enough justification for me to stay away from it...

Sure that's a way of looking at it however it still does not mean anything considering that people still trade in it.

If people find my sack of potatoes valuable then by all means, its a currency I can use to trade (potatoes actually have more value, technically ... lol).

Sure Bitcoin might be super volatile but, it holds a value.

 

[captaincranky]

...[ ]....If people find my sack of potatoes valuable then by all means, its a currency I can use to trade (potatoes actually have more value, technically ... lol).....[ ].....

Technically, potatoes are a standard unit of currency, whose value also is "volatile", according to the laws of supply and demand. That said, "money" is the "abstraction layer" between tangible goods, and traders of such.

I agree that Bitcoin "holds value". For me it's failure as an actual "currency", is the double abstraction transaction it requires. Goods or services > Bitcoin > currency of "xxx" realm.

Yes it works, (at least for the present), I'm not disputing that. But I can't differentiate "Bitcoin" from your typical casino chip, which only has value under the roof of the casino which minted it.

My trepidation is understandable though. Old people have "hangups". At least so claimed the culture which indoctrinated me.

 

[cliffordcooley]

There are many things that hold no value to me, and it is usually that which people pay the most to have.

 

[captaincranky]

There are many things that hold no value to me, and it is usually that which people pay the most to have.

Boy is that ever true with me as well. I can say without reservation, when my "estate" gets liquidated, collectors of Waterford crystal, Hummels, diamond jewelry, and silver flatware, need not attend.

 

[cliffordcooley]

And no Atari E.T cartridge!

 

[GirlDownunder]

I work in IT and have dealt with this issue before, but were able to restore everything from a backup. Luckily, we make sure that our clients keep up to date with their full backups. I can't believe that a hospital didn't have anything they could restore the files from.

One of our local hotels had this happen-- get this: no back-ups at all! The news then reported that a local IT co. had taken their computers & "worked on it for days"-..lol. I was like, you mean, "kept your PC's for three days & then charged you for something they KNEW they couldn't retrieve"? Talk about insult-to-injury? I'd be suing that IT shop. That sort makes us ALL look bad. In the end, the hotel paid up & got their stuff back.

The real issue is that having proper IT people in place is rare when it's the ONE area that ought to be the best cared for. There are soooo many businesses I know of who look at IT/security as last on the list.

 

[captaincranky]

...[ ]...The real issue is that having proper IT people in place is rare when it's the ONE area that ought to be the best cared for. There are soooo many businesses I know of who look at IT/security as last on the list.

I think people start to simply take their computer for granted. We expect the car to start in the morning. We expect the building we work in to not be a crater when we get there, and we expect the computer to work the next time we push the mouse around.

As for having "a good IT person in place", there are a goodly number of small businesses who simply can't afford that. There are only so many hours in a day, and stuff that doesn't appear broken, may not get fixed.

So the concept that, the data will be there in the morning, may not be completely carelessness, but human nature and preoccupation with other necessities..

Besides, even with a backup solution in place, anything that is to be backed up, needs extensive security scanning before archiving. What ever that interval is, is data you're going to lose during a hijack. A mere day's worth of information at a busy hospital could amount to a lot of lost information.

As computers become more commonplace, (several to a person), more uses have be invented for them, and sole reliance on them becomes a major issue. I think pen & paper still has its place in modern data management, but I know that's crazy talk.

 

[DelJo63]

How can you work with computers in a hospital and not be trained to tell what malicious links and stuff would look like? thats kinda part of the job description. Theyre lucky this wasnt alot worse.

Yeah, but worse still, the team failed to have sufficient backups to just wipe the system and restore (OMG, I hope they realized that was a choice!!)

 

[DelJo63]

Besides, even with a backup solution in place, anything that is to be backed up, needs extensive security scanning before archiving. What ever that interval is, is data you're going to lose during a hijack. A mere day's worth of information at a busy hospital could amount to a lot of lost information.

There are two levels of backups

1. the system itself - - all inclusive and if restored, recreates a fully operational system
2. the data which the system supports - - client, billing and employee records

Using a good backup and a differential method greatly reduces the efforts.
(1) should not be a major task nor need 12 to 24 variations imo, 1/qtr is sufficient.
(2) ought to be a DBMS backup issue and that alone would have complicated the attack.

It's a full time job to be able to assure what is known as "Business Continuation" and includes the planning for a full loss of the facility and getting to business as usual with minimal delay. If the team can't plan to that level, GET ANOTHER TEAM!

 

[DaveBG]

Now those that use ransomware will get more violent since it pays off.